168: The Genius of Your Genes wth Donna Gates

Hi, I'm Natalie Jill, fat loss expert turned high performance coach. When odds are stacked against us, how do we shift and create everything from nothing? How do we level up when we aren't feeling it yet or we've had a big setback. On this podcast I'll be talking to some of the most inspiring and courageous men and women on this planet who at their worst learned how to achieve success greater than they ever dreamed possible. Leveling up and creating everything from nothing. Donna Gates is 73 years old and she looks 40. She's truly aging in reverse. And I met her because she was interviewing me for her online summit which I'll share in the show notes so you can access it. But I quickly connected with her. I love my conversation with her and I wanted to learn so much more, especially since I have a community called Aging in Reverse. And and after learning that she's the international bestseller of the Body Ecology Diet, basically about recovering your health and rebuilding your immunity and the Body Ecology guide to growing younger Anti aging wisdom for every generation. I had to learn more. I wanted to know what was her secrets and I learned that for over 30 years Donna has been on a mission to change the way the world eats. And her first book introduce the world to sugar free, gluten free, casein free and probiotic rich diet which is now common things that we hear about, see about in stores. We have friends that are following those, but this is years ago before people really knew what those things meant. And get this, in 1994, Donna introduced a powered blend of Stevia to the US and it's since become the safest and most popular natural sweetener in the world. I had no idea she was behind that. She also pioneered get this and championed food like young coconut kefir and coconut oil. And she's the one who coined the phrase inner ecosystem to describe the still undiscovered network of microbes in our gut, which is now called the microbiome. She's also began teaching about the long forgotten health benefits of fermented foods to provide the diversity needed in a healthy gut. She is a true pioneer. So today I've got her on with me and I cannot wait to learn exactly, exactly how Donna Gates leveled up and created everything from nothing. Oh, and by the way, if you want to watch the extended version of this interview because we went on a little longer and join in on all the conversations about all things aging in reverse, you want to check out my community at Aging in Reverse me Today, I'm here with Donna Gates and Donna, I'm so excited to talk with you. Those of you that do not know her. This is incredible. I'm looking at her right now. She's 73 years old. She looks 30 years younger than her age. She's been in nutrition for 30 years. She's an expert. She's so incredible. And she's really a pioneer when it comes to anti aging. And Donna, thank you so much for being here today and chatting with me.

Well, thank you very much for inviting me to be on and thank you for the compliments, too.

I have so many questions for you, but I guess my first biggest one is before we started recording, you mentioned that when you really got into health and nutrition and anti aging, this was not really big with your generation. You were really a pioneer when it came to it.

Not just a pioneer, but those of us that were considered odd, very OD hippies. Of course, it was this very small group of people, but we were passionate about it. It's just that anytime you tried to bring it out of that world and share it with, say, your family members or anybody else you knew, you just got this really weird look and raised eyebrows. And eventually I learned to just not go there and just give up. Don't talk to people. They're not ready to hear it yet. But what's so exciting is that so my children are your age and, you know, I did try to influence them to eat well, but of course they rebelled and they didn't. But now they're. Now they're fine, but many years later. But what was so interesting is we. There was people like you and many people in our space today, exactly in your age bracket, that has completely turned that around. And it's so exciting to see because when you're 30 years ago, I really had a huge, huge concern about where we were going. I knew we couldn't stay on this path. Eating. It got worse. As a matter of fact, the food we ate then was even better. TV dinners and things like that were awful. But it's way worse today and yet, and you know the consequences. So it's really, really good to see so many, you know, cool people. They just have these great audiences and a real passion and they're fun, entertaining, smart. So I'm kind of excited to still be a part of it today, actually. Yeah. Back down in this younger generation. But my own generation is still, still behind the times for the most part.

What made you get interested in it? What made you take this on as your. Did you have a vision that this was going to Be your career.

Did you.

What got you interested in all of this?

Well, I think, you know, a lot of us will say, well, we were sick. You know, I took antibiotics from the age of 13 or 15 or something from my skin to 30, totally wrecked my health, had severe candidiasis, but didn't know what that was yet. That wasn't about to come. We didn't know anything about yeast infections for many years, but. And I was a very big part of that coming to the forefront. But really at the. I remember my father died when I was 7 and he was like the most important person in the world to me. And I remember having these conversations with God, thinking, why did you take away my teacher? How am I going to do what I've come to do? So I don't know where that came from. Someone put that thought in my mind or what. But all my life that I can remember, I thought, I'm here to do something. Part of my frustration for the, for the longest time was I kept asking, okay, I know I'm here to do something. What is it? You know, when will it start? When will I get to do it? Now, looking back over all these years, I can say that I, you know, there's sometimes a long, long learning curve before you get to actually do it. And it's all this training that's happening that you don't realize is related to what you're ultimately going to do is that training period is what I was going through for a time.

So it's interesting because you've been, you've been doing this for over 30 years, right? Correct, 30 years.

If you count the learning along. 10 years of learning. 40 years. I'd say, wow, 40 years.

It's because somebody would pull up your brand or look at what you've done and they look at it as this big empire and like it was this just like it just happened. But, but as you're saying, this is a 40 year journey.

Yeah. And I, and I have a bad habit. I guess it's part of the journey. I mean, part of what I'm here to do is I'll bring things out before people are ready to get. Get it. You know, I was the first person to ever talk about the microbiome. The first in my book that I wrote it was the first person I brought coconut oil. It was considered an evil oil. I brought it back and I started teaching about it. Literally run all over the country like Johnny Appleseed telling about coconut oil. And, and then, you know, very quickly it jumped into the Store Stevie was the slower story. Like I just kind of kept saying we need something other than sugar and aspartame if we're ever going to get, well, get back on track. We can't have sugar and we can't have, you know, nutrisweet and equal. So lo and behold, on a rather amazing story. So all these stories have a real. Everything I've ever done has a really amazing story around it, which makes me know that I didn't do it like that. Things happened that allowed me to be able to keep moving in that direction. Then stevia came into the world. It was just literally a thought. The Japanese had created this ability to take the stevia leaf, which was very, didn't taste good, had a very strong licorice like flavor and pull out just two elements, steviacide and robotiacide. And then they'd given it to the Chinese. And in this university in Beijing, they had won an award for this delicious tasting. Well, what they had done was, I didn't know this at the time when I started working with them. And it started coming in the country illegally, by the way. As my shipments started coming in from China, the FDA had put a band on it, but they were looking at the shipping ports and my product, my stevia powder was coming in through the US mail so we could just. Literally the whole half of my garage was filled up with it. Because I don't think they understood, I don't know. I mean, it was far more than I had any idea what I would ever do with it. But it was a whole new concept in sweetness. And it was only in a powder form at first. So I had to learn how to use it. And people would take a tiny little pinhead and use too much and hate it. So then Bob Atkins, who was really into these kind of things, contacted me and we started becoming friends and he's helped help me promote it. And then other people did as well. And so they had it in their newsletters. And then I actually found myself in the stevia business selling this kind of illegal. It was okay. They didn't say anything about selling it. They said, you can bring it in, but I already had it here. There's just a lot of amazing things that happened that allowed me to have that contact. But what it was was more robotic side than stevia side, which is why it tasted so good. I didn't know that for a couple of years. So I just started marketing it as stevia. And today all over the world, it's everywhere and it's Stevia, but it's mostly robotic.

Did you ever have people in your life? I'm just trying to think of. Think through. Like, if I had these ideas that were definitely newer out there, like stevia, which was a huge undertaking, and even coconut oil to a lot. A lot of extent. Did you have anybody trying to stop you? Like, what did you ever have, you know, your family or friends are saying, no, this is not a good move? And how did you handle that?

Well, it was just a norm for me. Like, I think from the beginning of life, I used to think that if I die, my mother's gonna write on my tombstone, oh, Donna. Like, where'd you come up with that idea? It was always, always that way. Nobody thought my ideas mattered, and so I was used to that.

So they thought they did. Like, they said, they don't matter, or you just. They weren't interested. So you took it as that.

Like, it was so off base. Like, where are you coming from? They felt right to me, and you have to live by that. And usually I think I have made a million mistakes, believe me. But, you know, for the most part, that voice, that feeling that I should do this worked for me. And so I got to the point where other people didn't matter. If you want to go into another example in my work with autism, so I have an undergraduate degree in child development. I've always been interested in our children. Always. I've always known they were headed for danger. And so I majored in child development to try to understand children and development and all that. But when I heard about autism, I was really concerned, didn't know a single thing about it. So I started going to my first conference, went downstairs, and they had all these booths with products for kids with autism, like pancakes and bread and mixes and things that in them were sugar and bad oils. And I thought, these kids are never.

Going to get well.

So I formed a group of mothers. I asked the introverts to find me some moms, and one showed up. We got her son. Well, in a very short time, she was pregnant already, two months pregnant, and her little baby was second. Little guy was super healthy. Anyway, more people started coming, and they named themselves bedrock, which stands for Body Ecology Diet. Recovering our kids. The kids were just getting well. Everybody in the entire group was recovering, and they were all. A large number were getting well. Group of initially four to six became 2,000 parents. And we were sharing what we were doing, you know, that I'd done before. I didn't know about autism, so I was learning and Sharing. But then other doctors that were working with children's, you know, they were called Dan doctors at that time, and the parents were going to them and they saw the kids getting well, so they started adopting, you know, a lot of everything. I mean, they're seeing what was working, so they started doing it too. And that was even frustrating because I was already had my line of products out. One of the top doctors in that group came up to me and said, donna, we'd love to promote you, but we can't because you're selling products and also because there's a message you're putting telling these mothers we don't want them to know. He said, we don't want them to feel bad or guilty for having an unassistic child. Well, the message that I was teaching my group, and they, believe it or not, agreed, was that we're creating this. We're having these children. And they have weak immune systems. They don't have a healthy inner ecosystem, which has got to be established at birth. They're mostly on soy formula. Most of them are blood type A. They're toxins in their body because they happen to be the ones that don't detoxify efficiently. They were glad to know that. And standing right next to me when he said that was one of my moms with two children they've gotten well. And before I could even answer him, she stepped up and said, what do you mean? I wish I had known. You know, then you have something to work on.

Yeah, I think as a mom, like, we want to put. Put rhyme and reason to things like we want to know. I don't, but I get where the doctor was thinking that. But like, I know as a mom, I would want to know if I caused something like just. It helps you connect the dots with the question of why my child.

Exactly. But I understand, you know, where he's coming from. You know, don't want to hurt their feelings. But anyway, so I've always had people going against me. And actually, eventually, after very successfully working and helping in the field with autism, I gave. I quit because. Because there are times when you are playing a game and you realize you're not going to win that game. It's time to pull out and go do something else. So for me, it became not about helping these kids get well. I already put the information out there. It was really how to prevent it.

So, Donna, I have another question, and this is more on the. On the business side of things too. But so I think of driven people, and you are a Total example of somebody super driven. You have a vision, you have an idea, and you know how to enroll masses in it. Did that affect relationships at all? And how. And I. And I am asking that on a personal question, too, because I know I have very much that type of personality, and it always has been a struggle with me and relationships. So my first husband, and then I'm married now, hopefully the final marriage. But I.

That's such a good question. Such a good one. If I. You know, like I said, you make so many mistakes. The good thing about eventually being in your 70s or 80s or something is there's at least you can look back with a history of what you've done wrong. You're not going to keep doing those mistakes. But that's a great question, because I hadn't started this work in my first marriage. I wouldn't have even probably married him if I'd had any idea where I was going. But. And I wasn't. I wasn't so driven and passionate. I was just starting my family. They were everything. Okay. Second marriage, though. Yes. Because what happens is that all of us have the yin yang, male, female side to us. And what happens for us to go out in the world with women? We have to pull out the warrior side, the masculine side, the one that isn't soft and cuddly and nurturing and, you know, staying home and having babies, breastfeeding. We're cooking and all that. We're just the opposite. But we have that in us. Like, I love that side.

Yeah.

I usually can't be in it, you know, because, I mean, I can relate.

To exactly what you're saying. Yeah.

So. So it's almost like somehow I wish I'd done more talk, touching, you know, just taking moments. Just sometimes the smallest things, like reaching over and just rubbing someone's back to let them know that you're there or appreciating the support he did give me. You focused.

So let's pivot a little bit more into. I want to pivot into anti aging a little bit, and I want to really talk about the expert in gut health and the genes because. And especially how it relates to hormones. So I've got a lot of questions around there, and you are that person to go to for a lot of this. So first of all, gut health. Let's talk about that first, because that was. You were really cutting edge with that. No one even knew what microbiome meant when you were starting to talk about that.

That word wasn't used for 17 more years or 12 years or something, because. And so I just sat there one night at my kitchen table and said, there's this world inside of us. You know, we're out there looking at the moon and space and all. There's a really important world in here and no one knows about it. What do we call it? And so. Because at that time, everyone was concerned about pollution of the air and the water and all. And they're talking about the ecosystem I thought was an inner ecosystem, but now it's called the microbiome. More often in science, it's more scientific.

So you studied it and figured it out. And were you. Were people looking at you like, what are you even talking about right now?

Actually, that was interesting because that was one area where people were intrigued. Like, wow, I never heard this before. And then right along with that, you know, many questions I kept having myself that I felt like the universe is answering me. Well, okay, how does it get inside of us? And then I. And I majored in child development and my passion was prenatal development in the womb. And I had. It's hard to find information about that those days. I was real drawn to that. I naturally went back to that and I began to understand that there's microbes that enter our body at birth and all that begin to set this in place. And the breast milk is playing a key role in all that happening, that microbiome being developed. And then. So people were fascinated by that. You know, I explained how we destroyed it. Like, sometimes nature comes along and just completely. A fire will happen and completely wipe out an entire forest with all the animals and everything that lives there, and it can be started over again. And so then I started thinking, well, okay, we're not babies. You can't do that exactly that anymore. But how would you start it over? And that's when I realized the importance of fermented foods. Who had these bacteria that were eaten all over the world. And except for Sally Fallon in her book Wise Tradition, her book, she was the only one ever talked about these fermented foods. But I just started teaching about them a lot. And I don't know, again, I think sometimes you are given support from the universe because this information is coming out there. You're just literally being a vehicle to get it out. Yeah, I do love to teach. So that was fun part to the whole thing.

It's so interesting what you're saying right here, because almost everyone I've interviewed that has a following or a brand or has enrolled people in a movement, they say a similar thing that they have. They feel that they are a vehicle for communication from a higher power, from the universe, whatever they call it. And when they surrender to that, that's when their best material comes out. And it's interesting because you just said that. Versus when people try to do it for. Just because they want to be famous or they want to be. They're trying to build for money. But when they do it, when I'm going to be a vehicle to get the information out, use me. That seems to be when people thrive.

That's it in a nutshell. And I think it is a matter of setting aside your own ego, because there's a lot of times where you would rather do something else or not do it at all or just not be stressful. You know, it's a whole lot of giving up of things you might want because you have to do this. Yeah. So I don't think a lot of people are, you know, they're. They have to get the ego and that self, you know, I want. For me, you have to realize it's not about us.

Yeah.

It's real strong sense that, you know, all of us have lost people. Some of the younger somebody, older parents or whatever, grandparents, they've died. And I think, you know, and I will too. Of course. We all will. And then what happens? Well, I don't feel that we. I feel that we are our soul. I've actually been with people with AIDS and different times where people literally have died. And I've even felt like I was at a birth, my friend's birth, and I felt the room just packed with souls.

Yeah.

Just could feel that room. And then. And then I've also felt the same thing when I've been with several people when they died, just other. Just the fullness to the room. So I've always had the feeling that, yes, we leave our physical body, but we're there.

Yeah.

And that these ancestors, or whatever you want to call them, are. You know, they want this work, they want the world to advance. They want this information to come out. And it's an extraordinary time. So those of us that are alive right now, particularly if you're called in to be of service and you're given. Some spiritual teacher told me a long time ago that if you see something that needs to be done, God's showing you that you need to do something about that.

I just got chills.

So I think that's something really important to never forget and just, you know, take that leap of faith. Just drum up your courage and go for It. And if you fail, you feel so what we always do. Yeah, but I believe there's a powerful, powerful force. And I think one of the smartest things you can do is what I call, you know, enlarging your spiritual power or developing it or growing it, because. And how do you do that? Because. Well, first of all, just keep going, you know, just trust. Developing trust is being very, very grateful. It's very, very important. But when you do that, then your spiritual power grows. And that's what that means, is that we are a better channel between the unseen world of these souls that can't. They don't have hands and feet and muscles and, you know, mouths to sweep. Yeah, they need us to do that. So they're looking for people to work through. And they're there. I know they' because they've always been there for me. And I'm sure many people are saying, yep, me too. So you learn to tune in with that world, begin to communicate with them, think about them, especially be grateful for help. You know that this is kind of.

Off topic with what I'm going to ask you next, but I have to ask it because what you're saying is really speaking to me.

When you.

When you say ask for it, how does someone ask for it? What do they do?

Well, I mean, I think man has always prayed, but they tend to pray selfishly to God for their own. You know, help me with this, help me with that. But if your prayer or if your ask is bigger, we need. Here's an example. We need something in the world other than sugar or we'll never get well. Yeah, you know, what's missing, you know, and then, like the whole.

I get it. So it's not. It's not about, I need to make more money. I need to do this. It's not, I'm a famous actress. Yeah. It's.

It's. But you'll get the red car or the whatever anyway. And even if you don't, you get this just fantastic sense of, I made a difference in this world. And when I die, the things that are I'm really going to be most proud of is not the money I made or the red car I traveled in or whatever. It's my kids who are making a difference in the world. And the people all over the world, it's a better world because I did it. And that's rich. That's where real wealth comes from.

Really good. I find if I typically. Before I go to sleep at night, that's the time that I'll Sort of like meditate on a question I have unanswered. And if I think about that question, almost without fail around three or four in the morning, the answer comes to me. It may not be an answer I like, it may not be one I like, but something comes to me that has me looking at things different. If I really. I don't. I guess that's the meditating on it. That's what I would call it.

Well, you know, a place that happens for me is in the shower when I'm around water, water, water at the.

If I go to the ocean. And I actually just said that to my friend yesterday. Whenever I go to the ocean, I feel really connected and get answers.

Yeah, you just maybe. Because when you get there around water, you're relaxing so much and you can tap into that.

Yeah, that's really cool. Okay, so I want to talk about DNA and genes a little bit now because that's what you're really known for. Now. You've known for a lot of things, but this is fascinating to me because I've not really heard anyone connect DNA and genes and how this affects us. So I want to talk a little bit about that and hormones.

Well, as far as how it affects us, I've. As I got more and more into genes, I realized that we come from thousands and thousands and thousands of years of people who survived.

Okay?

And so we are there. We're that, we're survivors. They had courage, they had bravery, they had, you know, they were inventive and creative and all that. So they, you know, the world kept evolving and developing. So that's really who we really, really are. But when you look at your genes, you. We typically tend to look for where there are problems that could be variations. They're called or alleles or SNPs, and they show you a potential risk factor for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hormone imbalances, weight gain. And especially what I think is important is what's your best diet. So right now and forever. So when I did started the Body Called Gifts diet book, you know, people always call body diet, but we're really a way of life based on seven principles. And the first principle is the principle of uniqueness. So for 30 years I've been saying nobody should be on the exact same diet. The book I wrote was for people with infections like candidiasis and so on. But it's a great diet, but it's not necessarily the permanent you diet. You can expand out and get closer to what you need. So nutrigenomics is the putting together of nutrition and genes. And there's amazing information in our DNA about that. As far as hormones go though, there's four key genes that people look at to see how, you know, how are you, what risk are you for cancer of the breast or prostate, so on, even colon cancer and all. But. And it's not brca. You know, a lot of us have the BRCA variation and until 1940, nobody ever had an issue with it, but we changed our diet. Now people are. But other genes that are probably more important, believe it or not, to look at is our liver enzymes or liver genes. The liver genes are called CYP450 genes and there's one called CYP451B1. They're always numbers and letters. And that one is a really important one to look at because it's telling us that estrogen can cause cancer if it breaks down into the wrong form. So when something breaks down, like estrogen breaks down into estrone, for example, for hydroxyesterone, those are called metabolites, the breakdown products or metabolites. So 4 hydroxy esterone is the one that causes cancer. And if you have some of these 1v1 variants, your risk is much higher. But there's another gene called CYP1A1 that's more protective. And there's another one called CYP3A4 that you want to look at too. If 2 and 4 are balanced, that is helping. 1v1 is not so much a problem. But then there's another gene that's pretty common and that's called COMT C O M T. That one also has to do with how efficiently you clear estrogen. You don't clear estrogen if that gene is not working very effectively. So it's very simple. You know, you can just, you get your 23andMe. Or there's other companies with DNA tests now that don't share your information if you'd rather work with them. Like Self Decode has their own, for example, anyway, that you can look at the whole picture. You don't want to look at just one B1. What else do you have going for it? And then finally, the most important thing to remember is so what if you have that one? I do. My father's side of the family has a lot of breast cancer. They're Italian, which is more common in that population. People and I have variants there too. But I'm not worried because I don't do the things that would cause cancer. So we're completely in control. Sometimes you can't control Things, because stress can play a factor in that comp gene, for example, and you're going through a period of stress where it's just hard to control it. But overall, all the things that we teach people to do, sleep, move and exercise the best way for their body, eat right, detoxify, and get toxins out of your body. So on there, that's another group. A really important group to look at is detoxification genes. Because if you have variants there, which the kids with autism do, 85% of them have a methylation gene that's kind of popular, called mthfr. 85% and that then they don't make neurotransmitters efficiently, they don't detoxify efficiently, but there's a workaround for that. They take a B vitamin supplement and that gets going. And that's what I love about looking at the genes, is you can find the potential problem. And as far as I can tell, there's always a workaround. So I'll take a look at someone's gene report. I'm kind of looking for the Achilles heel, maybe a few things that might help or even make that risk greater. But then today we're so far advanced in everything we know there's a workaround. So it's better to know that, know the potential risks, and then know what your workaround is. It's very reassuring. I guess if I'm hearing you correctly.

From everything I've been asking you, and correct me if I'm wrong, hormones are important, but really it sounds like what's more important is understanding your DNA and then having a healthy gut, watching what you're eating as kind of the base, and then the hormones play into that. Like you just said, you have a gene which maybe doesn't do the same things with estrogen, but because the other things are in check, it's not an issue. Talk to me more about that.

Okay, so because of the 1B one, your risk for breaking estrogen down into the wrong form, the 4 hydroxylast metabolite, is greater.

Got it.

But there are things, simple things, like believe it or not, eating cruciferous vegetables. Do you like raw arugula?

Yeah, I love it. I eat it all the time. I crave it.

Is this a great, great food to eat? All your cruciferous vegetables, some cooked and some raw, but arugula is the one you want to eat raw. There's a whole variety of cruciferous vegetables, and they all help express that, make sure that genes expressed properly.

So as I'm talking to you and obviously you're so knowledgeable when it comes to nutrition and you look so. It's just incredible. You've had, you're just thriving. I have a question for you because this is very real for me and I'm wondering if this is for you. I feel I eat such a natural, unprocessed way and I don't really have any foods that cause inflammation or allergens. It's very rare that I would. And because of that I actually feel like I crave what I need. Like I just said, I crave arugula. My body starts craving, craving what it needs. Do you have that experience?

Yeah, I think once you get the junk, the addictive food out of our body, which is a very large, you know, even chocolate for example is got all these. All foods have a front and a back, a positive and negative side to them. Chocolate does have polyphenols, which are good for the microbes in the gut. But it's got a lot of bad things too. It's super high in oxalates, super high in copper. If you have herpes or any kind of virus in your body, you do not want chocolate and so on. So there's everything has a front and a back. So I think, see, you can teach people how to read a genetic report, but you can't just come out of school knowing is 30 or 40 years of knowledge on these foods, for example, which things to pull into. But if you get the junk out and also, especially if you eat fermented foods, because now you've got all these healthy microbes in your gut, they know they request just like a yeast infection is requesting sugar, feed me. We want the blood to be really more acidic so we survive in it. Well, now you've got a totally different situation where you've got all these healthy microbes in your gut. And they're saying we want, you know, cruciferous sulforaphane, we want other bioactives that are in the food. And they, by the way, it's really important to know that we only have about 20,000 plus genes. That's not a whole lot. Plants have more than we do dogs. Interestingly, our dogs have about the same amount of genes we have. But what's really, really interesting about these genes is that the microbes in our gut have their own set of genes. Every single one of the trillions of microbes in your gut has their own complete set of DNA. So you can imagine that DNA power that you have inside of you now, if it's a healthy gut. Then they're in there doing all kinds of work. And because they have, there are more of them and there are more genes coming from them at work from them, they're doing the heavy lifting. We don't have enough genes to run our body. They're inside of us, running, taking on the heavy load of producing things and triggering signals. They send out a lot of signals and all that trigger things throughout the body and interact with our own genes and tell them what to do. So they're really important to have inside of you. That's why you can't just take a little probiotic supplement. So we sell Bifidis. I think that's a really important one to take. But I for years try to explain this to people. But we have. If you go out in the field and you pick three heads of cabbage and some kale and a couple carrots and ginger, and you bring them in, shred them all up, pack them in a jar and start fermenting them, you. Every single, every single head of cabbage, every carrot, anything you have in there that you fermented, had a complete microbiome, a whole world growing on it. An amazing diversity growing on that head of cabbage. Now you bring it in, shred it up, pack it in a jar, and you have a diversity that was created by God, like nature created or God created diversity. And that is what scientists know very well, that the healthiest guts are the guts that have that diversity. We can't get the diversity from just taking a probiotic. Now, I'm not saying they're not good too, but we have a liquid, a probiotic liquid that we bring in from Australia, and we've taken grains like quinoa, millet and biodynamic brown rice and chickpeas, grown a culture off of those. So again, every single piece of quinoa and millet and so on had its own little world on it. And so you're bringing in all of that, all of that culture, in a sense, growing this culture off of it. And then, you know, that's what people drink when they're getting our probiotic liquid. So again, the diversity is beyond anything that man can ever create. So it's hard to get people to understand that because the news, the media is all about probiotic supplements. And they drive so much of what we know and what we don't know. So that's very frustrating. Just like I mentioned before, with autism here, we were actually getting kids. Well, the mothers were out there. You know, we had a very, very large following but when we tried to explain about preventing autism, that it's very doable. We're doing it now for a long time. What, 15, 16, 17 years, we have been. No one hears about that yet.

Yeah.

And so it's really frustrating to try to get the word out there. And I'm very grateful when I get a chance to do something like this, because there are. There's a big. We live in a yin yang world.

Yeah.

And there's good and there's bad. You get to choose which world you want play in. But there is always this big force pushing against those of us that are trying to do the right thing. And, you know, I just have to keep going eventually, definitely make progress. I will say that, you know, all of us that are doing anything good today or did back then, we're standing on the shoulders of other people that also were trying very hard to get the message out. So you have to get. Now there's way more people, way more sick people, but way more people like you playing this game. And it's a really, really good time.

Donna, any signs of slowing down for you or what's next? What do you focus on next?

Well, I do think about that, because I used to say last year even that I didn't have any gray hair. But I can't say that this year. I've had a really, really stressful three years building two houses here in Charleston. And the people that showed up are not, you know, like people I'm used to working with. But anyway, it was so stressful that I now have gray hair. So I'm trying to figure out, well, you.

You skirted it until age 73, so that's pretty impressive.

Yeah, I just started, but I hate seeing it, you know, like, right here in Donna.

I've had since I was, like, 36, so 48.

I'm really trying to dig down and find out what are we missing? I know it has a lot to do with a gene, by the way, called catalase.

Okay.

Catalase. So. So we naturally make hydrogen. We naturally make toxin, basically, in the body called superoxide.

Okay.

But that's okay, because nature has another gene that makes. Called sod. That. Superoxide. Dismissed. That turns. That turns the superoxide into hydrogen peroxide. That's where your gray hair comes from. But another gene comes along and turns that. The catalase gene. The cat turns the hydrogen peroxide into oxygen and water and glutathione. So you need that one gene. You need them both. Really.

Yeah.

But again, stress is another whole Factor, you know, that's not the only thing I look at. But the body's always making toxins. Nature's always got these antidotes, if you want to call them that, to try to, you know, get the toxin broken down into something useful. So the whole great thing about, about genes is that we've got all this knowledge now that it's going to help us tremendously in the future. The future is extraordinary. And those of us that are alive right now, even though the world seems crazy, we're the really lucky ones to be here. I think there are a lot of souls that would love to be in this world right now.

Yeah, yeah. So no slowing down then. You're going to keep going. You've got.

I'm waiting. I mean, I actually several times have thought it was the end. Okay, I'm done. You know, like with the microbiome. Everybody's talking about it now. And I thought, okay, there's no need for me anymore. They got it. But then I realized that, and then this whole gene thing several years ago started becoming like a fire in me. And I realized this is the principle of uniqueness. This is the proof. For years I've been telling people that we're all unique. And now I can prove that to people. So it's a really exciting thing. And also, again, parents are better parents. They're going to start really, really preparing their bodies for have a child. We have to do that now. And they'll get their genes tested and babies will be tested at birth. And it's literally going to change the world. We're ahead of us because you can now. It's actually possible now to have a designer baby.

Wow.

You can start to snip out things in your family that you want to snip out, like down syndrome, but you can also have a taller child or a more athletic child or whatever. So we really have to think about how far do we want to go in this? Is this going to become a world where genetically modified babies are the thing? And if you don't do that to your baby, are you looked down upon because you're not genetically enhanced somehow? There's always a good and a bad to anything, any science, everything that we do. But I don't know if I'm going to slow down. I still have energy, thank God. And I feel, and I'm curious when my. When I was right after my father died and I was in a family reunion and they rode my grandmother into the dining room. Great grandmother, actually. She was. I don't Know how old she was actually very old to me. You know, she had like really white hair and you could see through it. And she had spots all over her body and very swollen legs. So she was in this wheelchair and very flabby muscles. And I thought, because I just was dealing with death, I thought, does God. I mean, we go through this whole life and that's it for us. We come out, that ends, you know, and then I thought, I don't think I would do that. I think it's something we're doing wrong. And at that very moment I made a decision if there's another possibility, then that I want to know what it is. So I think that's always been a driving. So that's still true. I'm still passionately interested in why we age. I think we know why we age now. What are some of the things coming online for us that we can do? And a lot of times it boils down to sleep, reducing the stress, moving, keep exercising, diet that's right for you personally. And then that's going to greatly slow down the aging process. But there are other things coming along that are going to be true therapies to even help us reverse our aging.

Got it.

Who wants to give up at this time?

So awesome. I'm with you.

An exciting time.

Donna, this is so fascinating. Thank you so much. I do have a final question for you. Where can people find you and tell us a little bit about your summit?

Oh, it's. Well, I've asked some amazing people to talk about genes because I want to let people know that this is not a scary subject. You won't learn awful things about yourself and you'll learn great things about yourself. So like you probably heard Jeffrey Smith talk about genetically modified foods. He even for me, in another summit I did talked about the effect that genetically modified foods had on the microbes in our gut. But you have never heard him talk about genes. Kiran Krishnan, he's been on a lot of subnets. He talks about the microbiome. He's genius. You've never heard him talk about the genes of the microbes in your gut. And when you hear this, all these talks and put it together, my hope for this is that we'll begin to create the buzz that needs to be there where everybody starts doing it like a catalyst. I like to see myself as a catalyst to start something and then let other things, you know, for it to grow from there. But the Summit is launching February 10, 2020, and it'll always be available online. But I'M really proud of it because I each interview I got off and I thought that was amazing. It wasn't me, it was them. So I hope people sign up. It's called the genius of your genes.

And I'm going to put a link below for people so they can find it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much Donna. This was amazing.

Thank you Natalie. Just don't ever give up. Keep doing what you're doing. You asked the best questions. Interviews are really valuable for people. So thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for leveling up with us today. Please share this episode if you found it helpful helpful so others can join in. And don't forget to hit that subscribe so you don't miss out on future shows. And if you would leave me a five star review. I appreciate those so much. I read all of them and it's how I know that I'm giving you information that you find valuable. And come interact with me over on Instagram @nataliejofit. I read all the direct messages and comments over there. Make it a great day. Creating everything from nothing.