The Hidden Cost Of Burnout

Welcome to Integrative Medicine with Dr. Leland Stillman, the podcast where we explore the best of East and West, old and new, conventional and unconventional, in search of answers to medicine's toughest cases and most difficult problems. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Diagnostics and therapeutics discussed on this podcast may or may not be right for you, so talk to a qualified practitioner before taking action based on what you learn here. If you'd like to become a patient at my practice, go to stillmanmd.com to schedule a complimentary discovery call. Thank you for listening and welcome to today's episode. Hello everyone, Dr. Stillman here, back for another episode of Stories of Hope, Stories of Healing. Today I am excited to welcome my friend Lisa Patel-Killer, founder of Vykon Customs, which is a supplement manufacturer in Canada. We source a lot of our custom mineral blends for patients from them. We've been very pleased and impressed with their product. Patients routinely say they like I ask patients in consults frequently, what gets the credit? If they're telling me like, I'm 50% better, I'm 90% better, whatever it is, I always ask them what gets the credit. And that's, I think, the secret to actually knowing what works. And very consistently people come back and say, well, it's like 30% the Bicon or 40% or 50%. And in my world, that's a huge proportion because a lot of patients, in fact, most patients, when I ask them that question, they're like, I don't know. It's kind of all of it. I'm like, yes, I know. That's the point. That's why it's a program and not just like Dr. Stillman's magical mystical supplement stack. It's a process. There's habits, there's diet, there's lifestyle changes, there's all of it. But when anything gets like above 15% consistently, that's a very short list. And that's why we really focus on minerals and vitamins, which Lisa knows all about. So Lisa, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. And thank you so much for the invitation. I can't wait to share. I love to be able to inspire. We all have a health journey and we're on different parts of that road.

Absolutely. So I like to start by asking everybody who they are and where they're from.

Absolutely. So yeah, I am in Ottawa, Canada. And where did I come from? I have had my own health journey. I feel like we all have.

I at least want a town name.

Okay, Ottawa.

Oh wait, that's right, Ottawa's a city, isn't it?

It is. Ottawa is actually the capital of Canada.

They stopped teaching geography in America, so I, you know, Canada's this place Toronto, right?

Oh my God, Quebec. We're not too far from Toronto. Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Toronto is the capital of Ontario, but everybody believes it's the capital of Canada. 'Cause Ottawa's smaller than Toronto, which is interesting.

Hmm.

Okay.

Got it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And as for, I mean, health journey, I feel like we all, a lot of us in this health industry have struggled with something that's brought us here that we passionate about, to learn about, and to be able to help heal ourselves. And then we're so passionate about it, we just wanna help others.

Absolutely. So where did that start for you?

Yeah, that really started for me. I've always been into health and wellness. So, I mean, I started figure skating when I was 3 years old. I spent a lot of my days at the ice rink, right? 6 days a week. I figure skated all the way through. I actually figure skated all the way till I was 37, and then I finally hung up my skates and just did it for fun after. So, so always been into running, training, Training, hitting the gym. You know, I used to skate in the summertime when we did, you know, national camps. I went to national championships with that. And then when I went to university, I joined a skating team, started running half marathons. You know, running really helped me to center myself. I'd been through a lot of childhood trauma, trauma in my 20s. I struggled in university with an eating disorder. And so running really helped me to center my focus. To be able to not necessarily have more control, but just have a clear mindset. That helped me a lot. And yeah, and I mean, I did a lot of running, a lot of CrossFit, a lot of different things, and was always trying to be as healthy as possible. And that really, I think it started with my mom too. You know, the first time I ever saw a chiropractor, I was 4 years old, right? So I, I went to the chiro once a month when I was a child. He put me back together when I would fall when I was skating, right? That was super important. And yeah, she was always into more holistic things. I remember actually when I was in primary school, my grandfather lived with us and I had pink eye. And I remember my grandpa saying, well, I know how to fix that. So he created this poultice and I cried and cried and cried. I actually had to sleep with potato skins on my eyes, wrapped with a pillowcase around my eyes to hold the potato skins on. And sure enough, I woke up the next day and the pink eye was gone.

How about that?

It's amazing. Right?

I think it's really interesting that potato skins are really high in oxalates. They're also really high in vitamin C. So, yeah.

So I think some of these things just naturally resonated within me thinking, God, there's gotta be something better than, you know, in my late potato skins and pillowcases. No, but better. So, so let's, let's fast forward. So graduate university, doing some more studies. I did post-grad work.

What kind of postgrad?

So I ended up in the restaurant business. I remember when I graduated. Oh, so I love the hustle bustle. The—

are you an adrenaline junkie?

I totally was. Totally was.

I wouldn't know anything about that.

Right? I loved being on fire, right? Just like, go, go, go, go, go, go. Like, what else can I do? How fast can I do this? Like, my mind was just racing all the time. Yeah. And I remember graduating from university and I was like, oh my gosh, I got a job. The first place I went to when they hired me as a bartender, my parents looked at me and went, you did what? Like, you just graduated from an honors Bachelor of Commerce with a specialty in accounting and finance and you got a job where? And I was like, but I can make so much money.

I know, right? I was shocked by this. I was in Vegas for a conference this past year and I talked to the guy back in the bar and he was like, yeah, easy 6 figures here in Vegas back in the bar. I was like, oh my gosh, wow.

I bought my first house when I was 25.

Geez. All right.

Right.

Oh, you can't do that in Canada now, no matter how much you bar back.

No, you can't do that in Canada now for sure. No, no. Yeah. Yeah. And so a lot of my post-grad stuff, I really wanted to get into something. You're, you know, it was like 27. I'm like, I need a career. What am I going to do? Right. So I thought, and I've always been the entrepreneurial spirit. Right? What can I do? How can I do it? I love figuring out that end goal. A lot of times at the expense of my health, but we'll get there.

Our listeners wouldn't know anything about that.

Yeah, right? This particular one though, actually, I love numbers. I love math. I love, right? It just lights me up.

Yes.

It's like, give me a, you know, some type of equation and I'm on it. And so I ended up doing all of my securities courses. So I wrote my securities, my options, derivatives, financial wealth management. I became a stockbroker.

Okay.

I played the stock market with people's money for a few years.

Okay.

Taught me a lot. I was in my late 20s and yeah, learned a lot, did a lot. And then I got invited to be partners in a restaurant. And so I had to make a decision because I loved my broking business. Uh-huh. I also loved the restaurant business and now I had the opportunity to own it. Uh-huh. So I was like, what do I do? And so I made the decision to give up my book. Uh-huh. I had a colleague that I worked closely with, so I—

Did anyone make fun of you for leaving finance to make money in the restaurant business?

No. You know what? A lot of the stockbrokers in the— and even my manager in the office actually came to the restaurant to see how I was doing and kept in touch with me.

Well, that's great. I guess in medicine, in medicine, it's like a running joke. It's like, oh yeah, the doctor who opened a restaurant, because that's a good investment. And doctors are just notoriously bad with their money. And it's like, I mean, I will hear stories of colleagues and I'm like, you thought what would make money? Maybe just stick to reading pages or whatever. Put it in that poor wolf's head.

Right?

Anyway.

And the thing, I think restaurants are like, they're fancy and they look fun.

There's an allure. Yeah.

Exactly. Everyone thinks they want to own a restaurant.

Totally get it.

And you know what? It is the complete opposite.

Yeah. Right.

Right. You have to work yourself into burnout. You make a very moderate return on investment. You hope that you don't have too much staff turnover and then you hope that your health survives at the end of it. Uh-huh. Yeah.

And if you're the best restaurant in town, you can raise prices and charge obscene amounts and you can actually make money.

For a period of time. Yeah. Because that too loses its luster.

Indeed.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

So then what?

So, so the restaurant led me into burnout, right?

Okay.

Which led me deeper into the health and wellness space. Uh-huh. That's really where it came from.

Did you cash out your chips? What happened?

Oh yeah. Yeah. So I actually, we, we bought and sold a few restaurants over the course of that, you know, 15 years. And, uh, and the last one was where, and the last one was interesting.

We opened in a bit of a recession and what a great time to start a restaurant.

I know, I know it was terrible timing. Anyways, I made it work. I got double-digit returns.

Good job.

And then I went, okay, I'm done. Like, I can't, I can't, I can't do this anymore. And this was when I had really hit rock bottom. Like, I'll tell you, I was doing, uh, kind of the equivalent of hit training for CrossFit, but it was called— Tony Greco is here in Ottawa. He owns a slew of gyms. He's a big guy, big name. He deals with a lot of NHLers, things like that. So, so I joined Greco and I was like, okay, I need to get back. Now that I'm not working 7 days a week and the restaurant's making money, I need to pull back. I need to get back to where I am doing the things that I love to do. Right. And then I realized that I couldn't. So I hit the gym.. And I got done a workout and they have their little, you know, their smoothie bar as you exit. So they made my whey protein shake as I went out the door and I almost fell asleep driving home. I was so exhausted and I went, okay, this is a problem. I've really done this to myself. Right. It's, it's different when you're in your twenties, in your twenties, you know what? Your body bounces back. Okay. When you're in your late thirties, it doesn't work like that. And You know what, when you're late 40s, doesn't work like that. And I figured that out pretty quick.

Got it.

And so that's when I actually found a naturopath to work with. Cause I thought, okay, I need to dig more into this. I need to learn more about this. And I found a naturopath. I did all the testing. I did acupuncture. I had a list of supplements, 3 pages long. I did all of this, right? The supplement guide, I call it, right?

Love it.

Yes. The multiple pages of supplements that you have to tick off every day, right? Did all that. But 9 months in, she did a live blood cell analysis and she would do it repeatedly. And so in this interim, I also was severely iron anemic, right? So I was getting iron injections.

A clue.

Clue. I was estrogen dominant and I was taking— I took DIM, I took indole-3-carbinol, I took all the things. Didn't change. And then I sat in her office one day, maybe 9 months later, 10 months later. And she looked at my live blood cell analysis. And I remember it was August, it was the end of summer. And she said, Lisa, this is the best live blood cell analysis I've ever seen. And I looked back at her and in my mind, I didn't say it. I said, thank you so much. That's great. Like, this is wonderful. And in my mind, I'm like, then why am I still completely exhausted? Right.

I only hear that story every day.

It's right. Everything looks normal. Everything's fine. This is the best.

What I think is interesting about that story is it's usually what I get, that it's the, my regular doctor says my labs are fine, not the live blood analysis, which I really don't, I can't say that I know much about. It sounds great in theory, but my suspicion has been that you cannot, I mean, I don't start there. And the reason why is that, you know, I just fell in love with minerals and vitamins and what I look at is basically the most fundamental elements of matter and energy. Because when you start to move those, it's very profound.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And I would see consistently the— I, you know, Jim Laird, who used to work, work in the practice, he used to say like a captain spreadsheet, you know, the spreadsheet with all the supplements on it. And it was like people would come in on all these supplements and they would just— they were good quality. They're buying them from people they trusted and liked. And some of it, I'm sure, was just— there is, there is a problem with supplement quality, which we may talk about today or maybe another day. But man, it's just, it's not a question of taking pages and pages worth of supplements. It's about the dose and the frequency and the duration and the balance. And they're all different. And it is— it has to be done in like an order or you overwhelm the system. So that really came home to me from a couple of mentors I worked with over the years who just really hammered that point. You know, you can do the most amazing work you'll ever do with 5 to 10 ingredients, not 20 or 30. And that is something that I think is so counterintuitive for most people. And yet what's funny about that to me is that if I go to like any kind of subject matter technical expert, soldier, sailor, financial analyst, doctor, whatever, and I'm like, hey, if you, you can have 5 to 10 ruthlessly effective things that are awesome and amazing and the highest quality possible, or you can have like 25 things that you got from the bottom shelf at Walmart, which one do you want? They're like 5 to 10. I get to pick the top quality all the time. And it's that, those, it's doing the fundamentals and the basics that always wins over the long haul.

Absolutely. Couldn't agree more.

Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah.

Carry on. Yeah.

And so, I mean, shortly after that, that's when I kind of fell into more studies. I thought, you know what? I need to fix myself. I need to learn more about this. I need to study. I need to take every course. I need to do all the things for health. That's when I dove in and then one day. I think it was in 2014 or 2015, and I had made really great progress, but I still had estrogen problems. I still had a little bit of the, I don't quite feel like myself. Mm-hmm. And I'm not recovering as well as I should, although I've come leaps and bounds from where I started. Mm-hmm. Right. And this was about the time I was training for kettlebells as well. So I was doing national level championships and, and getting ready, you know, kind of on the cusp of, of getting ready for Worlds. And I thought, I have to be able to perform better, right? You gotta remember when I went—

Were you so exhausted?

I, so when I was training for Worlds, I was doing two types. I was doing my kettlebells training 4 days a week, and then I was powerlifting 2 days a week with a coach. Uh-huh. And by Saturday morning, I would do my second powerlifting, uh, I would do a morning session. Yeah. On Saturday. And when I went home by noon, I had to have like a 2-hour nap. If, if my husband wanted to do something that night with friends or whatever, I had to have a nap. Like I was— I just couldn't do it.

You people are so funny to me. I'm exhausted, I can't do anything. Tell me about your week. Well, do 3 kettlebell workouts and then some powerlifting, and then I really need a 2-hour nap, and I just don't understand why, right?

Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah. But— and that's, that's when somebody said to me, why don't you have— have you ever thought about testing your hair? Oh, and I was like, what, what are you talking about, right? I'd never heard of it. I'm like, what are you talking about? And they're like, well, there's this test that tests for like mineral levels in your hair. And I was like, really? I'm like, and I had done like, I had spent tens of thousands of dollars between naturopaths, FDNs, protocols, diagnostic testing.

And I was like, I bet you tested your urine, your blood, your stool multiple times, parasites, bacteria, fungi.

I went through, so my eradication list. Yeah, Giardia, uh-huh, C. diff toxin A, uh-huh, H. pylori twice, SIBO, methane and hydrogen. Okay, what else? Candida multiple times.

Okay, how about some worms? Got any worms?

No, didn't have any worms.

Boring.

I know, right? Yeah, all of that. And it was like— and we always say it's like an onion, right? You peel the layer off in the gut and there's another thing that pops up, and that's exactly what's happening. I did one protocol and something else popped up, and I did that one, and then next thing popped up, and it was just a constant revolving issue.

Yes. Yeah, whack-a-mole is what I call it.

Yes. Yeah, exactly.

I did not become a doctor to play whack-a-mole.

No, no, not at all. And then, so by the time I got my first test back, so I was like, okay, let's do a hair sample. Like, this is easy. Like, let's see what I've got. And at the end of the day, I was like, please let this work, because I don't, I don't know what else.

I just want to be able to not take a 2-hour nap after powerlifting session late in the week after I've already done my 3 kettlebell workouts and my other powerlifting session. Yeah. Okay.

Exactly.

My favorite is when they're like, my fatigue is 4 out of 4. And I'm like, oh really? You're powerlifting and doing 3 kettlebells and it's a 4 out of 4. Okay. Let me introduce you to my patients who really have fatigue.

Right. Yeah. No, no, definitely, definitely would work my way back from, so I actually used powerlifting just 2 a week and I would finish with meditation to be able to support my body to get back on track. So this was years later, and I had a really great coach for that. It was a little bit unnerving, and I'll dive into back to minerals in a sec, but it was a little bit unnerving because he would sit me down, this big powerlifting garage gym. Like, I love chalk and I love to be like, you know what I mean? Like, I can't be the person in a pristine gym. I would just make a mess. And so he would sit me down in a box, on a box in the middle of the gym, and go, okay, take your 50 deep breaths with your eyes closed. Right? People around me doing—

who is your powerlifting coach?

Uh, Greg Chin. He was actually— he owned— he owns it. It moved online, uh, in 2020, but, uh, he owns Just Lift. So that's where I lifted and coached for a number of years.

Yeah, that was a great, great exposure to that world. Was from my friend Jim Laird, who— oh yes, that's right, earlier. Yeah, yeah, Jim. Jim's so funny because, yeah, he powerlifted until You know, he burned himself out and he ended up with ulcerative colitis, which is another podcast episode we've released. And he says, he says it all the time. He says, learning to sit still was the hardest thing I ever had to do. Just sit there and just be with myself. Took me the longest time. But what's funny is that I— and what really amuses me that you brought this up about your powerlifting coach in particular is that those guys, they go all out until they can't anymore. And then they realize, okay, we got to build in some restorative time. Gotta relax, gotta take those 50 deep breaths. And, you know, a lot of people listening to this, you're not powerlifting, but you're powering through life. Every minute's another thing. There's no downtime, there's no relaxation, there's no you time. So exactly, I, I gave somebody what I said, you know, doctor's orders, you have to book a 90-minute massage this week.

I love it.

That was my Monday consult. Yeah, very important.

Yep, self-care is so important.

It is.

And it's the first thing that goes It's the first thing that goes out the window.

It's not just vibes or, you know, feel-good Instagram carousels. It's, it's real, really important.

Exactly. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more. So, so yeah. So, I mean, when I got the hair test back, I met with Dr. Malter, who some people may be—

I didn't know you knew Malter.

I've known him for over 10 years. I've been to his house to visit. Yeah. He's a wonderful— him and Rosalie are wonderful people. And yeah, so he interpreted my, my very first HTMA test, told me what was going on. And I was like, it was like, my mind was blown. It's like, how did I not come across this?

Yeah, I know.

Sooner.

I know, right?

It's just so foundational.

And then you get deep into the literature on it, and you— and especially the animal literature on minerals, because it's all the same sort of biochemical operating system. But we don't have any qualms, relatively speaking, about, you know, killing, sacrificing animals to see what happens to them when we really rearrange the mineral biology or the vitamins or whatever of their Most vitamin deficiencies were discovered in animals. Like beriberi was discovered in, I think it was chickens that were fed parboiled rice and fell apart. Fascinating. And yet it doesn't translate over into human medicine at all in the sense that it's all there in the literature. You know, if you feed animals a nutrient mineral deficient diet or you give them toxic heavy metals or toxic forms of minerals, they'll all die. I mean, I think that the reason why is that in academia, You know, the guys who don't go after these lines of reasoning, they continue to get funded because they're not upsetting anybody's corporate apple cart. And at the end of the day, there is nothing convenient about mineral balancing for large-scale industrial agriculture or Big Pharma. Because when you really— I mean, and it's, it's so profound. I mean, the soil, you look at the soil, like, I look at people now the same way I think a farmer would look at soil. It's been really fun to read Joel Salatin's book, The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs, because he writes about the soil and how when You fix the soil, the animals are naturally healthy. And I look at people the same way as I would a field, right? And hair is like the equivalent in this analogy of like grass or like the vegetation, right? And when you nourish people properly, this health just emerges and it's all there in the literature. It's right there. And yet it ends up being this kind of backwater of natural integrative medicine. Increasingly, I think it's, it's in vogue because it's so powerful and people are waking up. Yeah, I felt the same way when I found it. Like, how, how have I not heard about this? And how do we not do this every quarter? This is such a cool test and it's $100. It costs the same to do a year's worth of tests as it did to just to do my blood and organic acids one time or do a 3-day stool collection study where it told me nothing. You know what I mean?

Yep. I agree.

Preaching to the choir, I know.

Well, and so I'll give you a little insight into how the next years rolled out as I started mineral balancing. I will share that it wasn't the easiest journey for me. I had a lot of detox.

Brutal. Because when you pour minerals into the system, it starts to pump out heavy metals. And that's an absolutely very intense experience. Let's just put it that way.

Yes. And you can appreciate that I grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, which is right across from Port Huron, Michigan. If anybody's familiar with that area in Sarnia, Ontario is known for what? Chemical Valley.

Great.

So Bayer, Petro-Canada, Dow Chemical, right? I drove past the plants every day to go to school for 20 years.

Well, it's safe, you know?

Right? Breathing in all the things, and you would see all the smoke coming out of the towers, and you're just like, oh my gosh.

Everyone who works here long enough gets cancer, it's okay.

Right? And it was just like, oh my gosh. So that's where I grew up, and I mean, I've detoxed every metal. All the things, right?

And what did you first start to eliminate? Did you start to eliminate in the first quarter?

Oh my gosh. I, I already had a little bit of elevated copper on my very first test. As for metals, I know over the course, I can't remember which one was first. I want to say maybe it was arsenic, but I moved arsenic, uranium, which is an exposure I have here, which I've now eliminated. It was water, aluminum, mercury. Melatonin had a lot to do with that.

You mean you used melatonin to get rid of mercury?

Yeah.

Fascinating.

I wasn't expecting it, but I would never have expected that.

Well, so what dose of melatonin did you use?

Okay. So I came across Dr. John Leland Stillman.

Yeah.

You might be familiar. He's in Sarasota. Yeah. Okay. So, so I came across MitoZen and I interviewed him with my group years ago. And I was really interested in, I've read his book and I did all these things. I was like, I wonder, well, It works. So I ended up doing the suppositories with 200 milligrams of melatonin, and then I think there's 400 glutathione or 250, something like that. And I did, uh, I want to say a 14-day stint with those, and I had like a dull fucking headache the whole time. And I retested my test and my mercury was at 0.14, and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm dumping mercury.

For reference, yes, for reference, we've clocked people in the practice with Mercury levels about 0.1 something and true elevations in mercury in their blood. And mine, when it was 0.179, when I was just getting into mineral balancing, I blew a 0.179 and my blood mercury test at that time was like 24, which for reference, you know, I look at someone with a 6 or a 7 and I say, this person's mercury toxic. Vegans will get down to like 1 or 2 or 3. People who really avoid carnivorous fish and are really tight with their, their health will generally be under 5. Not always, but often. And so when I blew it 24, the health department calls you at that point, you know, hello, Dr. Stillman, yes, do you know that you just— we just want to make sure you're aware that your mercury is 24. Okay, thank you for letting me know. Yeah, yeah.

And you're like, now I have to deal with this.

Yeah, you know, and that's when people are like, the hair test has nothing to do with the blood. I'm like, I don't know about that.

Yeah, I would— I think, I think blood and hair create a nice circle.

I love doing both at the same time. Yeah, love it.

Answers a lot of questions.

Yeah.

And provides a lot of good data for sure.

I would say, and I just came up with this, I would say it's like testing the minerals in the soil and then the minerals in the water.

Yeah.

You know, it's, they're not the same and the way that they're different matters a lot. And it's not just as simple as, oh, the soil is low in what? If you have soil that's low in this, but you give, or you have that in your well water, it could actually wash all that out, which is why a lot of people are surprised. Like, I don't understand why I'm needing so many minerals. Well, your terrain, they're washing out because your body's too acidic. Your body is too this, it's too that. Fascinating how all this fits together.

Yeah, absolutely. And so, so yeah, so I mean, after that detox, I would say at least I was at least 2 years moving through different things. Yeah. Right. And at the same time though, I think one of the things, and again, my case is just a bit different. So I want to kind of preemptively say that. Is that I was already on the path to going to Worlds when all this was transpiring, right? So I was mineral balancing while I was—

you were already a high-performance athlete. Yeah, very interesting. Okay.

Yeah, so, but I will tell you though, so I had two coaches, one kettlebell coach that did virtual, you know, uh, things for me. I modified my workouts based on what I knew my body was capable of. So if I had 8-minute set and then I had to run 5K and then I had to do a glove snatch for 10 minutes, probably the K run was gone, and the glove snatch might go down to 5 depending on the day I was having, right? Depending on how my body felt. I was making adjustments based on that. And after a few years of mineral balancing, that's when I went to Latvia. And so Latvia was a really cool— so this is where the world— so the first world championships I ever went to was in, uh, Aktobe, Kazakhstan. Interesting, uh, journey. The second was in Seoul in South Korea.

The third one was such a hub for global sport.

I know, right? And the, and the third one was in Dagovpils in Latvia. All very interesting places.

Is there like an Eastern Bloc Russian thing with kettlebells?

Yes.

Okay, that's what makes sense. I was like, Kazakhstan? Let's make our event as inaccessible as possible.

It took us 30 hours to get there. It was— the travel was insane.

Did you have to take a camel?

No, we didn't have to take a camel, but we did— yeah, we had to— it was a long time ago, but there was lots of transfers and overnights. And I remember getting— I was in bed Uh, no, I was about, uh, 28 hours into— we had another 2-hour flight, I think, and then we hit the airport that we had to get to, and all I wanted to do was brush my teeth. I'm like, I just need to wash my face and brush my teeth, you know? But, but no, so Lafayette came about. This is when I started to really feel better, right? Been mirror bouncing for a few years that I'm like, my hair had turned back to its normal color. We'll talk about that in a minute too. And I was feeling better. Oh, you know what? I don't know if I would or not. I don't know if I would or not.

We'll put a pin in that one. Think about it a little bit.

Yeah, we'll come back to that. But you know what? That year, my goal at 45 years of age was to— yeah, in Latvia— was to win the open age category in my event, in my weight class. So I brought home the gold medal in my quote unquote age group, right? 40 to 45 for those years. And I thought, no, this year, no, this year I want it all. Like, I want, I want to beat people who are half my age because I can. And I did.

And all over the world, all over the world.

How many competitors in my weight class? I think there was 12.

How much did your performance change from beginning of mineral balancing to winning the gold? Is that your— people may not be able to see this where they're listening, but is that your gold right there behind you?

Yes. So, so this is the Latvia, uh, the first year I got a silver in the open age, but not gold, which is why I came back. And in, um, Seoul, which is a 2017, I actually was fighting a really bad bout of H. pylori. So I won my own category, but in the open age, I got 4th. I just didn't have it in me because that was my second lift and my body was like, nope.

Yeah.

So that was a, that was a rough year to get through. I had a lot going on from my GI perspective. I was, yeah, and I was underweight because I run about 60 kilos or so, so, and, and I was a bit underweight at that point in time, so I was really struggling with energy.

Yeah. Okay. But you saw a huge improvement with mineral balancing to all of this?

100%. And you know, so let's go back to hair before we hit melatonin. Started dyeing my hair because I would get the odd gray, right? When I was probably about 37 or 38, started mineral balancing right at the beginning of my 40s. And then just kind of out of the blue, like not even really paying attention, I would book my times or I would dye my own hair, excuse me, based on what I saw. Right? Like, if I've seen grays come in, I'll dye my hair, whatever. And it was getting less and less. By the time I was 45, 44, 45, I didn't have any gray hair. So I have not dyed my hair. I'm gonna be 53 this year, haven't dyed my hair in a decade.

Congratulations, right? Now I'm gonna ask you, what gets the credit?

100% minerals.

Come on now, let's be generous. You're wearing blue blockers, you do all the things. Well, so I want you to think back to before when you When you did dye your hair and I want you to chunk out the credit, I want you to dole it out in percent increments.

Oh God.

To discrete things.

Percent increments.

My top, just off the top of my head.

Yep.

Sauna, light therapy, circadian rhythms, EMFs, mineral balancing. You know, many of the patients will say bioidentical hormones cuz we use them pretty early and often. Yeah. Let's see.

Infrared sauna is added for sure.

Obviously diet.

Infrared sauna. Yeah, yeah, you know, of course diet's always been high on the list. I would say more now I'm a lot more cognizant about integrating more on a daily basis and not trying to be perfect. Perfection is the opposite of good health.

Yeah, perfect is the enemy of good.

Yes, it just is, because if you're not perfect, then you go off the deep end going the other direction and you're not helping yourself.

That's where I bring in Dr. Stillman's late-night DJ voice. It's okay, you don't need to be perfect. It's gonna be all right. No, yeah, it's never gonna be perfect. Just one day, every day, make a little improvement, stick to the improvements, make them consistent, make them habits. Everything will be fine.

Exactly.

Yeah.

This is a journey, not a destination. Yeah. Right.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay. So what gets the credit?

Nervous system work is one. I pay a lot more attention to how my nervous system is functioning now. Right. Trying to balance that out. Whereas before I was type A, go, go, go.

What was your HRV when you started tracking it?

Oh my gosh. I feel like it was like 20.

20? I was guessing it was in the single digits. I once told a friend of mine who trains people in kettlebells that we would routinely get people in the single digits for HRV and his eyes just blew up. He's like, oh my gosh, single digits? Like, I never see that.

What? It's not easy. Well, and you know, something fascinating that I went through that was really cool was I was in Chicago in I don't know, 2015, maybe 2016. Anyways, we were there for a kettlebell conference and they had scheduled a bunch of us in with the University of Chicago. And so that on the first day, at the end of the day, we had to go do a VO2 max test, right? So as everybody knows, you slap on this terrible thing, got to put on your face.

I don't think everybody knows that, but yeah.

Okay. Well, put this big thing on your face. You have to breathe through. You look like Darth Vader sort of. And then you get on the treadmill and they keep raising it and you got to run faster. And anyways, I'm maxed out.

Out.

I can't remember exactly what the numbers were, but I maxed out pretty fast and I was in like a really good shape. Right. And the next day we had to come back and we had to do a 5-minute set with our competition weight. So for me, that was 16 kg, so about 35 pounds or so. And we had to do 5-minute set with our O2 on, right, right. With the ventilator on. And they did a comparison and the way that you breathe in kettlebells makes such a big difference. You know, Coach always said, whatever, whatever practice you're doing, breathe like a panting dog because you need the oxygen in your system. And so when you lift kettlebells, there's specific breathing techniques that can be faster or lower depending on how hard your heart is beating. You can maneuver and change that based on your breathwork in kettlebells. So, and I think this is one of the biggest mistakes people make when they're lifting kettlebells. They're just lifting it, but they're not breathing properly. To be able to regulate their nervous system, to be able to have a bigger output.

Fascinating. Okay. Right.

So yeah. So the VO2 test was really interesting because we all had a higher VO2 max when we were lifting our kettlebells than we were doing a traditional test.

Very interesting.

Hmm.

So nervous system work gets how much credit?

I'd say 15.

Okay. What else?

Yeah. Yeah. Infrared sauna, maybe 5. Changing my workouts. It's probably 25%, right? Other lifestyle practices, I mean, I use red light, uh, obviously blue block, like all the EMF stuff. I do all that. That's probably another 20% because I really wasn't doing any of that before, right? I wasn't really paying attention to that. Yeah, I didn't really know how terrible it was at the time, I guess.

Yeah.

And now we're surrounded, which is why the body's in a marathon state every day, right? We're constantly trying to dodge All the things that are coming in.

That's why the demand is just overwhelming. There's so many people who want help.

Exactly. And then I feel like my diet, I mean, my diet's always been good, but I do feel like that accounts for probably at least another 5%, right? I'm very cognizant of my diet.

I don't know where we are now. We got 5 for the sauna, 5 for that, 20—

where am I at?

15 for nervous system, 25 for lifestyle. So we're at 35 plus 15 if I'm tracking correctly. So that's 50%. What gets the other 50%?

Are you sure that's only 50?

I don't know. I'm just a doctor. I'm not that good.

I think I'm like 70%. I don't think you are. A lot of it is how I process stress.

How is that different from nervous system work, Lisa?

Well, come on now. It's just a little bit different because some of it has— some of it's about breathing and meditation and relaxation. It's your mental state.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like the way that you process cognitively process thoughts affects your nervous system, but it's not necessarily the same as the other pieces.

I gotta ask you an important question. When you started this journey, did you have, what was your mindset about whether or not you would get the outcome you wanted? Hmm.

I feel like when I started, I knew I would always achieve the outcome I wanted. But I would do it any way possible. Now I feel like, now I feel like I use what's in front of me and I have not the same mental drive to get to the end. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes me think of two quotes. One is, there are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is the same. And the other one is, in the beginner's mind, there are many ways to the top of the mountain. In the master's, there is only one.

Just different.

I don't think you're, you're quite saying exactly that, but it makes me think of those two quotes.

Yeah. In the beginning, I would've, I would've figured out a way to get to the end result by doing anything possible. Whereas now I'm smarter to say, this is a journey that we are on every day.

So that's why I always start my consults with asking people, and they've usually already told me in some way, but I want to drill down and really understand it. And I start by asking them what their top goal is. And I used to think about this in terms of what the top problem was, but a problem's not a goal. And that's one of the big problems with conventional medicine is it's very problem-oriented and very treatment-oriented. And it's sort of like, but we're not actually asking the big question, which is what does, how would we, like, well, how would we succeed? Or not what would, what, what does the state of illness, but what would a state of wellness look like? And what would we have to do in order to get there? And the other thing that I found was that it was actually remarkably simple to define what, like how to get there. And I would joke with patients. I still joke with patients. The short version of what I do is sell all your worldly possessions, move to a tropical location and eat a local seasonal diet rich in fish and shellfish. And I have to say, you'd have to add mineral balancing because there's like a lot of heavy metals endemic in the environment. And so I just found that didn't work. We've literally had patients, by the way, sell all their worldly possessions and move to Central America to try and get well and not get well. And shockingly enough, they've had some pretty crazy heavy metal tests over the years. And so then I started to realize that the real question I had to ask them was like, why are you here? What do you really want to get out of life? Because the reality is how we approach their problem has to be shaped to what they find meaningful in life. And so I don't usually get this deep into it with them, but it's about, well, like, why are we doing this? Why do we want to be well? What is the end goal? And a lot of the time it's about, you know, oh well, you're a— you, you know, like I treated a Marine infantry officer once and I was like, hey, your occupation is very— not just overtly hazardous in a sort of get blown up and shot at kind of way, but like, yep, you are aware that they are injecting you with toxic chemicals and you're inhaling them and you're breathing them and you're not eating the greatest food and you might be living in a moldy barracks and not have any other options. And he's like, yes, I know that. And I'm like, but you're— and he's like, I'm obsessed with being an infantry officer, I'm never leaving, or I won't— I'm not going to leave now, and I just need you to help me kind of like deal with it. I think that's important because sometimes it's like, you know, and I mean, I guess to extend the military analogy, it's like, like he was sort of ready to die on that hill. I hope— I wish he— I hope he doesn't, obviously. But it's really interesting having to think about, because I think many people fall into this, oh well, everything's got to be perfect, so I'm going to sell all my worldly possessions and start a health retreat in Costa Rica. But then they find that there's like more to life than that, you know, and we have to actually tailor what we do to that. And then we have to have hard conversations about whether or not someone's expectations are realistic. We've had some, we've had an, we often encounter this with cases where like, look, we think you need to do this. And they're like, I'm not willing to do that. It's like, well, okay. But then we don't know if you're ever going to get better, just to be candid. Right.

Yep. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think you're, you're all the time. Yeah. And your response of, I knew I would get there however I had to. And I asked that question because it started— the trend in this series was very— it was subtle, but it was unmistakable. Everyone said, I didn't know how I would get there, but I knew that I would. And I didn't not have doubts. I certainly had doubts. And I wonder, you know, things like, am I ever going to stop eliminating this aluminum? Or, you know, will I ever get in charge of— or will I ever conceive? Or will I ever have energy again? Right. But it's uncanny, the people who believe they can find a way. And I, I care about bringing that out in every single episode because I didn't get, you know, even, even now I still feel like I learn every day that it's actually the principles that really are the most important piece of this. The beliefs, the mindset, what you believe in, your values.

Great. I agree. Mindset plays a huge, huge role. I think people forget about that.

So is it like, you know the Yogi Berra quote about mindset?

I don't know if I do.

Do you know who Yogi Berra was?

Yeah. And Boo Boo.

Yeah. No, that's Yogi Berra. Yogi Berra was a famous coach for the New York Yankees who said baseball is 50% physical and 90% mental. 100%. So your answer to me really, we're going to line it up with the Yogi Berra quotes. You're going to say 90% of your success was mindset and 50% of it was all that other stuff you mentioned before.

I, and you, well, and you know what? So visualization, the one thing that I always taught my students when I was coaching kettlebells, right, is you have to learn how to visualize visualize what you're doing. And this isn't just about kettlebells and competing, but I will tell you that on that plane on the way to Latvia, by the time I landed in Latvia, right, to get ready to prep for what I was going to do, I'd already finished that, that lift in my mind. It was already done. I knew how many reps I was going to do. I knew how many things could go wrong and I knew exactly how I was going to fix them. It already happened in my mind.

That's great.

Right?

Yeah. I think that's incredibly important. And I think it's underutilized. I know I have my own goals that I am thinking of, of, oh, I should probably visualize that more actively. I feel like I do, but it's so easy to push off. And that's part of why I'm such a fan of, you know, having a really, you know, sacred morning routine where like I have an alarm every day that goes off to remind me to do that.

So I get super important.

I agree.

I think it's something like meditation that scares people because because they don't quote-unquote know how to do it. Well, on top of that, I feel like they can—

it's just, you know, when you start to go to that place, for a lot of people, all their trauma starts to bubble up.

Yeah.

And boy, can that be a lot to handle.

So yeah, absolutely.

I don't want to open too many cans of worms because I've got to run here in a minute, but I'm really curious. You— I feel like we didn't really tie off the journey of your mineral balancing. You went through years of eliminations You started Vicon. Yep. I guess sort of wrap the story up for us neatly.

Yeah. I mean, for me, it's just minerals are a part of my life. They have to be. This is the foundation.

Whether you like it or not.

Yeah. Whether you like it or not.

It is for all of us. Right? What is it like? There's a funny quote about that. It's, I think it was Pericles.

Is it from Yogi Bear and Boo Boo?

No, it was Pericles. I think it's an Athenian general. He said, whether or not you take an interest in, just because you do not take an interest in politics does not mean that politics will not take an interest in you. Like whether or not you take an interest in minerals, does not mean that, you know, your mineral biology will not make or break your life.

100%. And I think, I think that a lot of what I can achieve now in a very healthy way, being in my approaching kind of that mid-thirties, if you will, right? I wouldn't be able to do it the same if I wasn't, if I wasn't mineral balancing.

I totally agree.

Yeah.

I haven't really told my own story. Maybe I should. But yeah, I mean, when I started to really work with the minerals personally, things I couldn't do in my twenties became possible in my thirties. It was shocking. And patients have had the same experience over and over again. And it is so interesting. So tell everyone a little bit about Vykon, what you do, what your product is and how they can learn more about you.

Yeah. So, I mean, Vykon really came about— very short story— Vykon came about just as a need for my own clients way back when, because, you know, we talked about those 2, 3-page protocols and the, you know, supplements and more supplements and this and that. And I thought I wasn't getting recurring business. I wasn't getting people coming back. I wasn't getting people the results that they deserved because they couldn't follow the protocols I was administering to them.

They were on the churn and burn train.

They were exhausted.

Yeah.

They were exhausted. And all I was doing was throwing more at them to help them, but they couldn't implement it because they were so exhausted. And so at the end of the day, I just, I tried to solve that problem. And that's really where Vykon came from. And I saw changes instantly. It was like people were getting better results. They were able to be consistent. You know, I wasn't so concerned about timing of things. Right. It was like, I just want you to get the minerals into your system so that we can start to achieve some of the things that I know is possible. Yes.

Yeah.

And then I shared it.

Yeah. And you've also built something that I think is really interesting in that I will often have patients say, I just can't deal with 5 or 6 or 10 or whatever bottles every day. I need it to just be this many capsules this many times a day.

Yep.

And that's particularly for either the very overwhelmed and exhausted or the very busy and time poor.

Yep, exactly.

And so it's really nice to be able to just say, okay, all of our essential amino acids, all of our essential B vitamins, all of our minerals. And you know, this, we customize your blends all the time so much that you even made us a special, like, Dr. Stillman product line, which I love. And yeah, and we, we love them and we get rave reviews.

Amazing. And you know what, I mean, my whole, I feel like my whole life's work Very similar, I would say, to you, to what you're doing too. We just want to help people. We want to help people feel better. We want to help people achieve more. We want to help people live the life that they deserve to live. Yeah.

And for me, it's even at this point a much more existential mission than that because, you know, it was one thing when I was growing up and it was sort of like, oh yeah, people are sick. We have an obesity epidemic, blah, blah, blah. But at a certain point it started, it would be the writing, you know, just became very clear to me on the wall. We either mainstream this and everyone cleans up their mineral biology. Or civilization collapses under the weight, pun intended, of metabolic syndrome, obesity, autoimmunity, cancer, dementia. And, you know, minerals play a role in all of it. And so it's part of why I'm so intense about what I do. You know, I'm not an accountant filing paperwork. I'm not a lawyer, you know, like fighting some court case that will just end up filed away in some legal library. I am not You know, like a mechanic fixing another car. Like if we do not succeed, the future is very dystopian. And the people who want to sort of sideline all this, oh, the minerals don't matter, the heavy metals aren't toxic. If they succeed in sidelining that, it's going to be a very ugly place to live, this planet that we have. I agree. And if we fix it, it can be so amazing. We can all go back to eating tuna because it will be mercury-free and we can have swordfish on the grill and we can, you know, like it's just life can be so amazing. And I just, I mean, I, every day I get up, I have tons of energy, I feel great, my body works, and I think, gosh, everyone should feel this good all the time. Wouldn't that be amazing? So thank you for joining me.

Thank you for having me. This is absolute pleasure.

Good. I'm glad you had a good time. I did too. Thanks everyone for joining us. Tune in next time.