The Gateway to Holistic Wellness for Entrepreneurs with Laura Villanti

with Laura Villanti

Dec 20, 2024 · 00:51:32

Welcome to The Total Entrepreneur Mind, Body, Spirit, where we turn cutting-edge science into practical strategies for entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Dr. John Torrance, entrepreneur, Inc. 5000 honoree, and professor of entrepreneurial practice at Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management. Each episode, we dive into mental, physical, and spiritual health with expert guests offering actionable insights to help you thrive and perform at your highest level. Let's get started. Today's guest is Laura Valeni, a certified functional nutritional therapist with over 15 certifications in advanced dietary protocols, gut microbiome restoration, and holistic healing practices. Drawing from a childhood rooted in sustainable farming and decades of clinical experience, Laura focuses on using food as medicine to address chronic conditions like allergies, digestive issues, and autoimmune disorders. She's a pioneer in New York for Allergy Release Technique, or ART, and has trained extensively in autonomic response testing. Laura's passion is helping people achieve optimal health by healing the gut and fostering a balanced, whole-body approach to wellness. Laura, welcome to the podcast. It's so great to have you.

Well, thank you so much. I am so excited to join. I have a great passion here in this world of entrepreneurial work, and it's a unique needs here because their brains get to work every hour of the day. So they don't really take a day off or an hour off even from good thoughts coming forward. So what we're talking about is so critical.

Yeah. And, and I think you bring a great perspective, not only professionally, but, you know, as an entrepreneur as well, right? You, you're running a business and you're also doing all these great things with functional nutrition. So actually the, the first question is, well, what is functional nutrition for those who, who aren't familiar with the term?

Yeah, so we'll start even with what is nutrition. So nutrition is really how we bring fuel to ourselves, and it's predominantly, we call that food, but it could be beverages as well. And so the word functional nutrition could also tie in maybe even holistic, well-rounded nutrition. So really looking at allowing us to have our optimal vitality, optimal function. So functional nutrition aiding our best function for us.

Great. And yeah, super important, uh, for everybody, especially entrepreneurs though. So I know one of the things you, you talk about and work with is gut health. So how does gut health directly influence things that are important to entrepreneurs like mental clarity, energy levels, Especially for those who are so busy and who need to perform at their peak.

Right. So gut health is critical. And it has been said for a long time ago, Hippocrates, all disease begins in the gut. Conversely, all wellness begins in the gut. So really, our gut health is so critical to the health of our brain, our energy, our vitality, the health of our skin. Which people would be like, whoa, I thought our skin was our skin. Our lungs, every facet is so impacted by our gut health. So really it is critical. And we'll talk further, hopefully, about more details about what is this gut health, how can we go about it, what might be signs of it. But no, so, so, so critical there. And that gut can become permeable. The term leaky gut. It's a real thing where not properly digested food leaks into the bloodstream and can create a very inflammatory response. So leading us to everything from brain fog, fatigue, poor sleep, poor mood, lack of patience, anxiety, depression. So our gut health is critical and foremost for everyone. But certainly if we're trying to work harder and have more on our plate.

So what are some signs of gut health, or even an unhealthy gut? Like, how would people know that they're dealing with this?

Right. So first of all, you, we could feel it in the gut. We could feel pain or cramping. We could feel bloating. We could feel a little bit of bloat. We could feel a lot of bloat. We could have bowels that are way too firm, bowels that are way too loose. So outside of the gut, our lungs, we could just have asthma. Well, that actually ties back to gut health. We could have skin issues. We could have eczema, psoriasis, hives, just odd rashes that come and go. That ties back to gut health. So from our brain down to our toes, to our fingers. Our joint health, inflamed joints tie back into Gut health. So we must always consider the health of the gut and the balance of the gut microbiome with any health issue.

So is it a matter of like chewing and swallowing too fast, or is it a matter of the things you're choosing to eat, the order that you eat them in, the time of day? What are some of the things that can contribute to poor gut health?

All of what you mentioned would contribute, and Each plays a part, but let's talk about kind of the biggest items that are gonna give us the greatest bang for our effort. You know, where do we wanna look and that type of thing? So absolutely what we eat. And we probably may not even need to have this conversation if this were 100 years ago, because 100 years ago we really only had real food.

Mm-hmm.

You know, one, it was local, two, it was, organic. 3, it was fresh, and it was only real food, not processed foods. So that's what we had to eat. Today, we have many, many, many, many options for what we eat, and perhaps 80% of our beautiful large grocery stores, that is not best fuel for any of us.

Right.

So it's maybe only 20% of that big, beautiful store And so, what we're eating is most critical.

Mm-hmm.

And so, real food, eating real food. Would your ancestors have had that food to eat? Well, if they did, then it's real food.

Mm-hmm.

And nutrient-dense food. It's gonna take you the same amount of time to eat nutrient-dense food as it would nutrient-poor food. And that is so critical. Chewing absolutely comes into this too. So, eating way too fast, Not good for us. However, go back to the whole thing, right? It's easy for us to do. And also today, very, very, very difficult for us is to be able to eat. Digestion is a parasympathetic process.

Mm-hmm.

We must be in a relaxed state. And go back 50, 100 years ago, this was no problem. They all sat around this thing that was called a table and they actually sat and they may have had a blessing before. Certainly they were all calm and happy to be sitting there and not working. They're sitting and they sat and enjoyed this meal. No distractions. You know, would maybe talk and that was it. So today it is a real challenge to eat and not be doing something else while eating. So if we're doing something else, or if we're standing or we're driving while eating, there we are not in the parasympathetic state, so we will not digest as well.

Yeah, it's so prevalent too. I mean, I even do it sometimes, you know, like I'll just eat standing up, or yeah, I feel that I'm not completely relaxed when I'm eating, and I eat really fast, and there's not a lot of intention behind it. It's just trying to fuel myself up quickly and Yeah, I see this in a lot of the students and young entrepreneurs I work with. So yeah, super important.

That, that one is becoming year over year, even, even, even harder, you know, because it can become very common that people have a screen in front of them while they're eating or doing something else. So that one will take some discipline. It's worthy of the effort put in and it's very meaningful, but it's a newer age-timed problem and challenge for all of us.

And one of the things I've noticed is just how readily available the poor choices are, right? It seems much harder to find something that's nutrient-dense and whole versus the ultra-processed foods that are readily accessible. So could you talk a little bit about how food is different now than even it was just 10 years ago?

Absolutely. So we could even go back to fast food. So fast food is something that has just evolved in the last 60 years. Right? And believe it or not, those first French fries at like McDonald's or Burger King or Carol's, they were cooked in tallow. So this is a real food. Your ancestors actually had that fat. The body knows what to do with that fat. And today, like 99% of French fries or these fried things are done in very inexpensive, seed oils. They are ultra-inflammatory. And if you're to look at a manufacturing plant for which these seed oils come out of, it is so sophisticated, it looks like an oil refinery. And if you've ever driven by an oil refinery, that's a pretty impressive campus there for which it's a very complex process. But that is similar to what it takes to actually pull This oil out of these seeds. And most of them have been deodorized so that even if they're in your home, if you open the container, you don't know it's rancid because they deodorized it. They go rancid very easily, but it is not to be known because they deodorized it. So our food has become very, very, very, very processed. You know, many foods you could take and maybe they 10 years from now that would still be sitting in the package. There's no decay, any of that. And so our body really has no ability to pull any nutrition out of many of these processed foods, much less it is taking in a handful of toxicity. So not only is it not giving us what we need, but it's giving us a project to work on.

Yeah, so it kind of increases the load on our bodies, right? So not only are we not getting what we need, but now we have to work extra hard to deal with what we just ingested. That seems crazy.

So true there. And this ties back to the gut. And so something we should all leave with here and remember this is that every bite we take in can become nutrition for your organs, your tissues, right down to the cell. Or if it's not going to become nutrition because it wasn't nutrient-dense, real food that was properly digested, it will become toxicity. So there isn't really a gray area there. It will become toxicity for which incompletely digested food, even real food, can become a toxin load. So then we have to detoxify this within the organs, within the tissues, the cells, and it becomes grand work, actually. So another way to think about food is it is your gasoline. And so I'm quite sure 100% of all of us here listening are— we put the correct gas in our car.

Well, we should.

There isn't anyone that's like, no, I actually put the wrong gas in just for fun to see how long my car runs. And I've been fine. There isn't anyone doing this. So it is your gasoline. And our engine is far more sophisticated. And the upside to having the right gasoline put in is so, so, so great that it's well worthy of having because vitality and energy feels amazing.

And the research is really clear that when you have all that, you're more creative, you're more innovative, your relationships are better, and so on. And so there is a real ROI for entrepreneurs to pay attention to this. You know, are there relatively quick foods that are also very nutrient dense and good for us? Or like, do you have any favorites that people should put on their radar if they're looking for things that are quick and also good?

Sure. I'll talk about that in a few ways. Just maybe even thinking about, well, we're at home or we're traveling. I'll try to answer it 2 ways because there are different things and a lot of times people travel. So at home. Even a busy entrepreneur, you can get groceries delivered these days. This did not exist 10 and 20 and 40 years ago. So you can get groceries delivered, pick those right foods, have them delivered. That's the first step to eating well is you must have the food available. So if you don't have the food available, you'll take the things that you bought 6 months ago that have not decayed yet because they're in bags, and you might eat those things. So we need protein.

Mm-hmm.

Protein breaks down into amino acids. This is the energy of life. This is the essence of life here, these amino acids. So we need protein sources. So these can be from animals, from chicken and beef and lamb and pork, and any type of animal food like that. Can be eggs. So any real food. So if you, another great takeaway, 4 words. Just eat real food. You could abbreviate it JERF, J-E-R-F. Just eat real food. So eggs are real food. What do you want to cook or sauté these things in? Butter, ghee, olive oil, and then vegetables of every type, and then some fruits. We want far more vegetables than we want fruits. And again, you can go in the stores these days. And there's bags of organic frozen vegetables. So easy. You can buy this, put it in your freezer, and they'll be there in a month from now, even if you haven't grocery shopped in a month. So that is all easy to eat real food. With travel there, I was just in airports in the last 4 days and traveling. Plenty of restaurants, plenty of places, even in airports that you can eat real food. You can eat some protein, some vegetables, some fats there. It gets a little harder in restaurants unless you're at a very high-end restaurant, because real fat is more expensive.

Yeah.

You will find butter, but in that kitchen, in any frying vessel, it is likely a processed industrialized seed oil. So, Opting for non-fried foods in restaurants would be most wise.

I had French fries the other night when I was out, and I don't usually do that. And the next morning I had a hard time getting my Oura Ring off my finger because my, my knuckle was so swollen.

And truth is French fries, I'll even do taste tests at various restaurants just to maybe discern what type of fat they might be cooking in, but French fries have very little flavor. These days, it's not the French fry of old. And it's really because of these poor, cheap oils there. Yeah, I didn't mention fish and seafood. Of course, that's excellent. Easy to have on hand. Canned salmon, so easy to have on hand.

What about tuna from a can?

That is okay. Only because if you're listening to this, and you've ever had any silver amalgam fillings, In your mouth ever, then beware about eating tuna maybe more than once a month because the amount of mercury that could be there is already an amount you have to detoxify out. And if you had silver amalgam fillings ever in your life, you already have enough mercury to move out.

Ah, well, that's interesting. So you're just adding more mercury to what's already kind of in your head, right? Because of your fillings. Yeah.

Hmm. Interesting.

So back to the vegetables and fruits, right? So even if you get these fresh foods, they still could be dusted with chemicals. So it almost seems like detoxing on a regular basis is sort of worth it nowadays, is it?

It is not the first step we start with. However, I will say that every day, every minute, your cells are working to detox right now. So But as far as taking on a special task called detoxification, like I think I want to do a liver detox that's been on TikTok lately and it's trending. I think I'm doing a liver detox. I do not encourage anyone to do any real detoxification without being guided by a professional who knows what they're doing. Because again, we all could have in heavy metals or other things, and if we're not properly set up to prepare for detoxification, we can actually be creating more harm for ourselves. However, the first thing we all can do to really support detoxification is back to supporting your gut health and those basics, and even eating real food. And then real food in today's time is actually organic food. So eating organic, I'll share a story. I've been doing this work for 20 years, and I was humbled with the truth of what I'm about to share with you. And this just occurred in the last month. So with great confidence, I know this is the case because I know this client well. I've helped her on a journey where her gut was so poor she actually had to drop out of college after her first semester freshman year.

Wow.

She was only eating like 2 foods and That didn't work. So she was very challenged. So we've come a long way. And this summer she was saying how she had like the lymph in her arms was full. She's getting pain in the armpit, the arms. And in my testing work, I could see she's dealing with some infections. We started addressing those and, you know, it helped. But then we needed to up the amount of a particular antimicrobial support to have it help keep helping. And then it just happened in the last month that she stopped something she had been doing for a few months that I was not aware of. And I wouldn't have asked given her level of experience, my knowing her. She had been buying chopped lettuce in a bag, big bag. Of course it says rinsed.

Hmm.

She started doing that in May and she's like, she just 3 or 4 weeks ago shared this. She's like, Laura, I have to tell you, 'cause we got her a lot better over the summer, lymph getting better, but it went to a new level of better. I've stopped eating these salads. I'd been eating 2 salads a day since really like June, May, June, and I stopped it just 'cause I'm starting to meal prep more and such. And Laura, this whole lymph congestion thing is so much better.

Hmm.

And it's true. And so it still is now 3, 4 weeks out, even better. And so she went away on 2 different trips this summer and she's like, well, remember I felt better when I was away from home. So one could say, is it mold in the home? Is it something else? EMF, whatever. So moral of the story is rinsed, says it on the bag. You must always rinse, even if it's organic. Rinse, rinse, rinse, rinse.

Mm-hmm.

These were non-organic.

Hmm.

But here's a person, 25 years of age, who had been having this salads twice a day. That sounds heroic, but that's enough toxicity in her cells that her lymph was congested from this. 'Cause our cells excrete toxins out to what's called the extracellular matrix, this tissue, this lymph fluid, and yes. So organic and even rinse.

So what's on that lettuce that, I mean, do we even know, or is it just, you just rinse it just in case?

Well, right. No, we don't exactly know. Of course it's legal. And even organic things too, in bags like this, gas can be put into it, you know, to preserve it. That does not have to be on the label. Sure. We put gases in bagged things. To have them hold their color, all that stuff. But then think about any chopped lettuce, even in a salad bar or a place, is often sprayed with something so that it retains its color and form and doesn't grow the little rust look to it. But that astounded me.

Because here's somebody trying to do the right thing, right? Doing what they think is good. And, you know, there's just, it's an uphill battle because of the things you don't even know.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. So organic is critical. Now, in the world of fruits and vegetables, we have a list called the Clean 15. Those are fruits and vegetables that actually grow quite well in nature and in the environment they're in and don't usually need any chemicals or toxins added to help them grow or keep their form.

Mm-hmm.

Then the Dirty Dozen. So, Most critical to buy organic from the Dirty Dozen. That's fruits and vegetables. But quite honestly, even in dairy, so critical to get organic without growth hormones added. As well as our meats too.

Yeah. So actually, I just looked up what's on the Dirty Dozen, right? So I'll just read it real quick. It's strawberries, spinach, kale, grapes, peaches, pears, nectarines, apples, Bell and hot peppers, cherries, blueberries, and green beans. So these are things that if you buy them, you, you're saying you definitely wanna go organic. And even if you buy organic, you wanna rinse them just because of all the chemicals and pesticides on them.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I also found the Clean 15. So the Clean 15 consists of avocados, sweet corn, pineapple, onions, papaya, frozen sweet peas, Asparagus, honeydew melons, kiwi, cabbage, watermelon, mushrooms, mangoes, sweet potatoes, and carrots. Oh, interesting. All good stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And something else about how entrepreneurs and busy people with the whole food, making food choices. So again, get your groceries delivered. You can buy organic vegetables, frozen things that can make it easier. But then I want to assure you that the little bit of extra time you put into sourcing these or ordering even at restaurants or in airports, real foods, you know, that you get much more in return back.

Mm-hmm.

In more energy, better sleep, better brain processing, better mood, better relationships, longevity, vitality. Et cetera. You get far more back in return.

Yeah. So important, right? Because even though the expedient thing might be to just drink a Soylent so you can stay at your computer and keep hammering away, yeah, you're going to get the better ROI by going to that Clean 15 and eating something there with some protein. Yeah. Let's switch our attention to blood sugar because, I mean, that's something that I'm constantly aware of and dealing with. You know, I wore a CGM for a while just to see how my body reacts to foods. So what are you seeing among clients? Or what are some things for people to look out for? Or just, you know, talk about blood sugar in general, I guess.

Right. So, we go back to just eat real food. So, we start there.

Yeah.

Think about what your grandparents, great-grandparents ate, you know. So, having some protein and fat is most critical for balanced blood sugar. So, I always encourage clients, start there, figure out what is the protein that's going to satiate you, nourish you, please you. Right now. And then some fat usually comes with that. So a piece of chicken that's got skin on it, it's got fat. You know, fish has, you know, protein and fat with it. An egg is protein and fat. Choose that protein and fat to nourish you and give you fuel, then choose carbohydrates. And ideally, those carbohydrates come from like vegetables or maybe some fruit. fruit, but vegetables. And then very last, would you choose something that metabolizes faster as sugar, such as grains? You know, so we can choose carbohydrates, a potato, rice, things like that. Bread is made from a ground flour, so that's a little more processed.

Mm-hmm.

It is going to elevate blood sugar more quickly. So grains, If we put them last, and I can talk about inflammatory foods here in a second, in a general way and specific way, but very, very critical. Choose that protein and fat, and then, you know, you add more fats through salad dressing. Sometimes there's a sauce that could go on meats.

Mm-hmm.

And I differ this with, maybe in America, it's become pretty common. We might think, what's my carbohydrate at breakfast? Oh, I want a bagel. Or 2, or with donut.

Yeah. Or a bowl of Cheerios.

Coffee. Yeah. Coffee with some sugar, liquor, latte in it or something like that. So that's a lot of sugar right there. And the most important meal of the whole day to get accurate and correct is breakfast. Because if blood sugar starts to go wrong in the morning, it spends the whole rest of the day on a roller coaster up and down. And then we will need to snack between, whether it's grabbing a granola bar or maybe even a coffee to help us manage this whole situation. And blood sugar is the number one thing for quality sleep. Blood sugar balance is the number one thing that will affect quality sleep.

Yeah. And we know quality sleep is important for a lot of things. It's, you know, the first pillar of health and stuff. So yeah, talk a little bit more about that. Because So what's the big deal if I, you know, start the day with a big bowl of Cheerios and maybe a little, you know, vanilla-flavored yogurt? Now my blood sugar is out of whack all day. What's the big deal?

So the blood sugar will elevate, and we will put out excess insulin to help drive the sugar out of the bloodstream and into the cells, because high sugar in the bloodstream, very, very, very dangerous. Low blood sugar, is very, very, very dangerous. The body knows to give you an intense desire to go get food.

Right.

Like, when you have low blood sugar, you're not going to say, oh, yeah, let me just wait and finish this project. It's like, no, get something in here right now, because the brain isn't even working for you at any rate. So, high blood sugar, we put out excess insulin, it opens up the cell so sugar can flood into the cell. But then in doing that, we can often move it out too quickly. We put ourselves now back into low blood sugar an hour later. We're like, oh, I need to go get a little something. Then you get a little something, and that thing probably could be a carbohydrate and rock you right back up again. So you are on a roller coaster.

Mm-hmm.

Mid-afternoon fatigue for most people is simply Low blood sugar. Poor blood sugar management that started earlier in the day.

Hmm.

And then we keep going on that roller coaster. We go to bed at night, and middle of the night, the blood sugar drops. And in a normal, healthy environment, the pancreas can message to the liver. We go figure out how to pull out stored glycogen, convert it back to glucose, put it back out in the bloodstream, so you just keep sleeping. Well, that doesn't work too well in a lot of people through liver stress, pancreatic stress, system stress. And so that isn't happening. Blood sugar gets lower and lower. So the emergency department's called. Those are your adrenals. Your adrenals are called. They wake up and they pump out cortisol because that's the emergent fire department call.

Mm-hmm.

We need more sugar here. So cortisol's pumped out, and when we pump out cortisol, We open our eyes and we're like, oh, it's not morning. I'm awake. Oh, I'm awake. So it, your middle of night awakenings, very, very tied. There are some other things that could affect them, but blood sugar is foundational. We have to eat for blood sugar balance, every single one of us, period.

So what you eat for breakfast could certainly affect the way you sleep that next night.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. What are a couple of good, a good breakfast that somebody could eat even if they're rushed for time?

So things you could do, certainly eating eggs, protein and fat, amazing food for the brain with choline and that egg yolk. So eggs cooked in some butter or that type of thing. You could have berries with it. You could have unsweetened yogurt, could have an avocado. And depending on where you are in your gut health and such, you know, you could have a piece of toast that may have some fat on it, such as butter, and then some avocado over it. You know, if you cook on the weekend, you could make a quiche. It could be crustless quiche. Put together a quiche, cut out pieces like a piece of pie, and you could walk out the door with that in a little Ziploc bag. Doesn't even need to be heated. Kind of comes to room temperature on its own. Hard-boiled eggs. People love those for snacks. So, I mean, there's people that might have salmon at breakfast as well.

Um, so I guess the headline is make sure you're getting a protein with a fat and then add a carb, you know, like maybe, uh, maybe some berries or something like that.

You know, potatoes put together with some vegetables, some fat in there, leftover meat, kind of like a hash brown type of thing to be at the side of those eggs as well.

Let's talk about inflammatory foods now, because I think that's kind of critical to what we're all talking about here.

Yes, absolutely. So inflammatory foods, there are many of them today. So again, any processed, denatured food is really going to be inflammatory for us in some manner. Our body will have to work harder to process that, and it will not bring us nutrition. So we're kind of taking those off. Sugar is an inflammatory food, but there's other foods that, gee, my ancestors, my grandparents ate this. Why is it so inflammatory for me today?

Mm-hmm.

So grains, and even more specifically wheat. Wheat in modern America is a very inflammatory food. So it has been hybridized many, many, many times over, number one. Number two, we do not prepare bread in a traditional sourdough manner. The milling process of it, the short bake, yeast that gets added, this is not well digested.

Mm-hmm.

So it becomes inflammatory. But then we've also added here non-organic crops for the last few decades. We spray chemicals on them.

Mm-hmm.

And that lands in that wheat. But in the last 5, 6 years or so, we have figured out that if we spray the wheat crops a week before harvest, we dry the kernel nicely and we can get more bushels per acre. And it all looks like we're saving money for somebody. So that glyphosate weed killer, it works because it damages the gut of the insect. It is so damaging to our gut. So many of us today have sensitivities to eating wheat or find it's inflammatory, but it's really because of the glyphosate with it.

And glyphosate is the, that's the ingredient in Roundup, for example, right?

Yes, yes, yes, yeah. And so again, it is sprayed on more than just wheat lately. keep adding it to other things to really make that crop yield more. So wheat can be very inflammatory. And I guess I could name off top symptoms, conditions that can affect us when wheat isn't properly digested. Anxiety, depression, gut issues for sure, bloat. Uh, we could have diarrhea or constipation, joint pain, brain fog. Low thyroid, infertility.

Sounds like the disclaimer at the end of a pharmaceutical ad that you just rattled off there.

Exactly. So wheat can be very inflammatory, and it's pretty easy. You could just on your own, just take 4 weeks, at least 6 weeks, maybe eat zero wheat, zero, zero, zero wheat and observe.

And I hear that from a lot of people that, you know, that, well, you know, my grandparents ate this all the time and It's just bread, how bad could it be? But, you know, I guess the, the hard reality is it's not the same food item that it was 20, 50 years ago.

Absolutely, it's not at all. And each year it kind of keeps changing differently. So another inflammatory food can be dairy. And again, this comes back to our gut microbiome. We have to have a great, robust, healthy gut microbiome to digest any food. And what could damage our gut microbiome? eating processed foods, could antibiotics, because antibiotics there are there to kill the bad bacteria, but they also kill the good bacteria. So we're left with a gut that doesn't have the right bacteria to help us break down food.

Right.

And so even a food that our ancestors ate called dairy, they drank some milk, they ate some cheese, they ate some yogurt and such, and they were fine, but their gut microbiome maybe didn't have as many antibiotics, or they had none, right? So all these things can affect that.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, with dairy, I'll share the more common ways when dairy isn't properly digested. Definitely skin, eczema, we could see rashes there, and absolutely lung health. So asthma, that type of thing. It of course can also often lead to constipation, could possibly be diarrhea. Could be some gut issues, could be some fatigue, but again, the lung and skin, more unique for that.

So antibiotics wipe out bacteria, including the good stuff. How, how do you restore that? Do, do you recommend probiotics or fermented foods, or how can, 'cause I know a lot, especially we're coming up on a season where everybody's gonna be getting sick.

Mm-hmm.

People are gonna be taking antibiotics, and then they've gotta restore their gut flora. Mm-hmm. So what, what are some good practices to do that?

So absolutely, if ever taken antibiotics, it's very wise to use probiotic-rich food. and even probiotics there. Probiotic-rich foods include yogurt. So buy organic, full-fat yogurt there.

Oh, nice.

And because with protein, we need fat so that the two of them work together as a package in the body to nourish us. And fermented foods, our sauerkrauts, our kimchis, our pickles. And these would be all in like a glass case. not a jar on the grocery shelf, but in a cooler case. So any fermented foods are so helpful there. And then probiotics can be very helpful too. It gets a little harder selecting probiotics only because some people, you know, depending on the existing gut microbiome, it could be too much of a good dose.

Mm-hmm.

For them, and they could feel like it upset them or did something else So probiotics absolutely can and should get used, but it can get a little harder to know what's exactly right.

So let me just back up for a minute with something you said. Why do you want pickles out of the cooler versus just off the shelf at room temperature?

So the ones at room temperature off the shelf have been boiled and sealed. They're usually made with a vinegar. So if it was just pickles, comma, vinegar, comma, salt, and a few spices, you know, garlic and pepper or something, that's okay. It is actually gonna aid digestion, 'cause vinegar can help digestion. It's going to be okay, but it is not teeming and full of probiotics. So probiotics will die over about 115 degrees.

Mm-hmm.

So those fermented, traditionally fermented foods, Like the pickles, the sauerkrauts, they will be in a refrigerator. I always encourage people, ask your oldest living relative what they remember or know about fermented foods in the family. And they may say, oh my gosh, remember my grandmother always made a big crock of sauerkraut each winter, and we stored it in the garage, and we take scoops out once a week and bring it in the fridge, and then we just eat from it all week, or it was very traditional. So that's kind of a fun thing to do. Ask your oldest living relatives sooner versus later.

Yeah.

Yeah.

While they're still here. Yeah. So much wisdom you can gain from them. So let's switch our attention to chronic stress, which a lot of entrepreneurs face. So how does chronic stress impact things like the gut and what kind of dietary changes can help repair these stress-related damages to the digestive system?

Sure. So yeah, stress affects us in every possible way, your immune system, your mental health. your digestion. So stress is a very strong sympathetic dominant part of our nervous system. That is when we're doing, we're acting, we're moving, that type of thing. And digestion is a parasympathetic. So that high stress there, sympathetic dominant state, healing does not happen in that state. All healing happens when we're in parasympathetic or relaxed state. That's when we're sleeping. That's when we're maybe supposed to, you know, sitting around for a few hours at night, just relaxing or something like this, right? Or during the time that we're eating. And so our gut health is very much affected by stress. How would we go to restore that? So first and foremost, go back to eating real food.

Okay.

There are gut healing foods, and we can talk about that now. So Many people with gut issues might say that if you handed them a bowl of chicken vegetable soup, they're like, yeah, I actually could eat that and not have any pain. Like, I have pain with every other food but that. So soup is so healing. You know, we've heard about chicken soup for years. It really is healing. It is medicine there. But eating any easy-to-digest food is going to be the way to restore restore the gut. And I'll share in particular for those who have maybe some advanced conditions, there's an amazing dietary protocol put together over 20-some years ago by Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride, and it's called Gut and Psychology Syndrome or Gut and Physiology Syndrome. So really everything from our autisms, our ADHD, Anxiety, depression, eczemas, autoimmune, any chronic health conditions. This is the foremost dietary protocol to aid with restoring the gut lining that could have been damaged and bringing balance back to the microbial balance, back to the gut microbiome.

It's really simple when you boil it down, but it's not easy in a modern society. Right? Like, just like you said, just eat real food. It's simple advice, but not always easy, you know, this day and age. So yeah, that's super helpful.

And then the other truth we all have to walk away with is that any minute we spend, any hour we invest in our food and our nutrition will pay us back manyfold more in our life. And even in your days, I have a client in her 60s, just started working with her. She just shared yesterday, she's like, oh, Laura, I've told people that I feel 10 years younger. This is a month in, you know? And so I'm like, this is real. She said she's been telling people.

I'm like, okay.

You know, so that's the return for it.

Yeah. Even if you got nothing else but that, that would be incredible. Right. But, but of course we know there's all sorts of other things that come along with that too. So one more question for you. I mean, you do so much and you've got so many credentials and so much experience. Are there any areas of health that are often overlooked that can be key factors to overall health and vitality?

So something I definitely want to talk about, because I have an opportunity in the last 7 or so years to finding what helps those for which every best thing, even the best gut healing and on and on and on, we still hadn't gotten to everything. And so there's a form of assessment called the Autonomic Response Testing assessment, the work developed by Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt and many others in decades prior to him, but he's been really perfecting this over the last 40 years. And it gives a non-invasive way to assess the body for what hidden root cause stressors are. And so this is where we can find what is stressing organs or tissues or cells. And what is stress? Stress is that thing, well, we're actually measuring in this form of methodology, the ability for the body to create organized coherent light, but organs, tissues, cells to create organized coherent light, which really gives us our best vitality. So we can have stress going on at an organ, at the liver, when a person never knows about it. But stress left unchecked for decades becomes what we might call illness, which then, you know, another decade or 2 more could be called disease. And so the ability to see these hidden root cause stressors, which are infections and toxins, and maybe it's really all toxins because the reason infections are problems for us is because they create toxins within us. So this ability to find these hidden root cause stressors that are setting one up for illness or disease, when not found in even thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars of other testing, is a beautiful thing. And it can be used by anybody, but certainly if anyone has any health issue for which they kind of can't find any answers for, and they've been to the 10 best clinics in the country, And they're still dealing with it, this autonomic response testing is ideal. And it is something I do in my office here in Rochester, New York, but can do for clients that are not local as well. So with that, another stressor we are not aware of really is electromagnetic frequency and radiation. And that comes back to stress, that comes back to entrepreneurs in, you know, we're all affected by it. Right? We all have these devices. There's some simple things we can do. So that device, the easiest simple thing you could do at night, you go to bed, it is not near your head. We need to get into a parasympathetic state. And if we have something that's scanning for messages, the nervous system can feel that stress even though we can't consciously. think we're feeling it. So that off or in airplane mode and not near your head is an easy, cost you nothing, simple, takes no time to do. And so that's a stressor, a factor. Like maybe you're asking about things that we're not aware of, other factors. Then another one, which is so not known even in our best, even functional medicine, because there's not really a way for them to assess that, is the role of the Health of the jaw. So many of us, we carry infections there, low-lying infections. Some of us know we've had infections because we might have had a root canal because the tooth was infected. So then it was kind of cleaned out and left in there. But these low-lying jaw infections, even if you don't feel it, often are the root cause, hidden root cause. of major downstream organ illness and/or disease states. So that one's not well known. Working with a biological dentist is a great first step with everybody, but even coupling this autonomic response testing on top of that, because this testing can even find stress levels there going on that may not even be seen in the best scans used in our biological dentistry. So I, I'd like to share that wisdom because it's not well known. And if anyone's dealing with any health issue, not as vibrant, even the brain is vibrant, or we have cognitive issues or neurological, want to stay away from neurological diseases, the health of the jaw, you know, it's just a few inches south of the brain. So critical. And anyone dealing with sinus issues, we should be well aware of our jaw health as well.

Yeah. So it sounds like, you know, by the time this becomes an actual chronic disease or condition, it's been decades in the making.

That's a true statement. I just had a client who for 25 years has been dealing with an autoimmune condition, but through amazing work on her behalf, and I've supported her along the way, she has kept that autoimmune disease stagnant, non-progressing, which is really pretty remarkable. But, uh, I'd always sense, or she knew that she had some issue upper left jaw. And, you know, I'd encourage her to have the dentist look more closely with every scan. Nothing to be found. Nothing to be found. She did switch to a biological dentist in the last 9 months. And in doing a scan, a cone beam CT scan, it was seen that there was a lesion there. So putting that together and with all the testing I do and what I could see, I said to her, Can you remind me? Because I wasn't with her 25 years ago. Your autoimmunity, did it start on one side of the body?

Oh, yes.

Yes, Laura. My left. This area on my left, this area on my left and my left and my left. So this tooth that had been showing for some time and for 10 years, she knew it was sensitive. So before we know it's sensitive, it's probably decades it's already been Ill and diseased. So, 25 years ago, diagnosed autoimmune.

Yeah.

Wow.

So, I feel like we could keep this conversation going all day. It's— there's so much here and so interesting, but can you distill all of this into maybe one or two main points that you would really like young entrepreneurs to come away with?

Yes. Invest in your food, both from a financial perspective. It's a far better investment that will pay you more dividends than even investments in your business. You'll make investments in your business as well. The time you spend investing in eating real food is also going to pay back more than any other investment we're making. Because if we don't invest in that time and the money now, I can assure you, because this is what I do every day, we spend hundredfold or thousandfold in time and money to recover what we hadn't done. So, but making it simple, eat real food, take the time, eat in a relaxed state. Yes, we can boil it down to some simple things, but really just investing the time and then money to buy better food is probably the best advice because the payback is far, far, far greater.

Well said. So if people want to learn more about you and what you do or find you, where could they go?

So we have a website. It is the 4 words, athomewithwellness.com. You can find us as well on Instagram and Facebook, same, athomewithwellness.com. And we have a great team of very experienced nutritional therapists. We have a brain retraining, limbic system, stress management coach. And for any of those in the Rochester, New York area, amazing lymphatic support. Called Floprezo, but that is available at certain clinics around the world as well. And then my advanced work, the autonomic response testing, available really for anyone anywhere.

And I should disclose that my entire family have been lucky beneficiaries of your services. So thank you for that.

Oh, you're most welcome.

Well, Laura, thanks so much for being here. This is a really great conversation. And I appreciate it.

Thank you so much, John. So happy to be part.

Thank you so much for listening to the Total Entrepreneur Mind Body Spirit Podcast. If you liked what you heard or heard something interesting today, please give us a like, share a comment, or better yet, subscribe to the podcast. Thank you.