Water | Swimming Pools
Clear coat and paint for wood furniture
Question from TA
Debra, I’m looking for products to finish some wood furniture. Given that the items will be used by my child, I’m looking for things that are safe, durable, and possibly even safe to eat off of (in the case of clear-coating a wood table, for instance). And I’m sensitive to strong odors, so it needs to be low-odor as well. I know that AFM make Polyureseal, and we have actually used that previously for a couple of smaller things, but I haven’t yet looked into whether it’s safe for food contact.
I know that you recommend Old Fashioned Milk Paint, but I believe you used that for painting walls rather than wood furniture, correct? I see on their website that it does need a clear acrylic finish, and they recommend AFM Safecoat Acriglaze for that. For children’s products, which will inevitably come in contact with water, we’d need to use that finish, apparently. Are there any other paints that are safe to use “as is” without applying a clear finish on top?
Debra’s Answer
This is a difficult question to answer off the top of my head.
I searched for “food safe paint” and got a variety of answers, including one that said all paints and finishes are safe once they are cured! I wouldn’t agree with that!
Some toys say that the are painted with safe paints. If I remember correctly, these are usually paints that don’t contain heavy metals.
I would contact Ecos Paints and see if their paints and finishes meet your needs. I searched for “food safe” on their site and nothing came up, but they have a pet paint. The page says “For animals, this problem is doubled, because they are in the habit of actively sniffing their environment and even licking, biting and chewing things that we would never put in our mouths. As a result, pets actively ingest the harmful chemicals that normally remain on walls, floors and doors.”
And their pet paint is designed to be safe for pets and their behaviors.
Readers, any suggestions?
Wool as flame retardant
Question from TA
Debra, I’ve read some claims that wool burns at a lower temperature (600 degrees F, as I recall) than the extremely hot temperatures involved in the open flame test that mattresses must pass. So the claim is that the wool isn’t an adequate flame retardant and thus other things are being mixed in with the wool.
I think the idea that was being put forth was that things are being added to the wool itself; in other words, the mattress manufacturer isn’t intentionally adding any flame retardant to the mattress, but rather the wool itself is being produced in a way that it includes something for fire retardant purposes, since the wool alone can’t withstand higher than 600-degree temperatures.
Have you heard anything like this? The concern was that we could be buying something for it’s non-toxic attributes, while it might actually contain something as bad or worse than what we are trying to avoid.
Debra’s Answer
Wool typically is considerable to be non-flammable in it’s natural state.
A fabric made entirely of wool is difficult to ignite, burns slowly, and has limited ability to sustain a flame.
I came across a website that was showing how wool ignites. They were burning a piece of yarn hanging down, surrounded by air.
This is not the way wool is used in a mattress or furniture as a flame retardant. There it is a layer of fabric with very little air around it.
If someone is claiming that wool must be treated to pass the new open flame test, the proof should be showing a mattress or sofa in flames with a wool fire retardant barrier in place on the mattress or sofa.
Last year I actually spoke with a flammability research test engineer from the Bureau of Electronic and Appliance Repair, Home Furnishings and Thermal Insulation in Calfiornia, who was working on the new flammability regulations there. He told me that all manufacturers need to do to make cotten, linen and hemp pass the new smolder test was to add a layer of wool beneath.
The liternature overwhelmingly agrees that the flammability of wool in it’s natural state it low. There is no need to add chemical flame retardants.
pitcher water filter for vacation
Question from PT
I am in search of a portable filtering device to take on vacation. I found this Clearly Filtered pitcher and it looks like it has some of the important certifications. What do you think?
www.clearlyfiltered.com/test-data
Thanks
Debra’s Answer
I can’t really evaluate this because the site doesn’t give enough information. It claims to remove everything you would want to remove, but it says nothing about the filter media, so I can’t confirm their claim.
Also keep in mind the pitcher is good for only 200 gallons, which is probably enough for your vacation.
It’s probably fine for a temporary filter, but again, the site doesn’t give enough information for me to give it a proper evaluation.
Formaldehyde-free plywood, other woodworking materials
Question from TA
Debra, are you familiar with PureBond formaldehyde-free plywood? It is apparently available at Home Depot, and it is soy-based rather than using the urea formaldehyde. I typically avoid soy (have a bit of a food sensitivity to it and don’t think it’s great for us overall), but in this instance, we won’t be eating it, and it seems much better than typical plywood. But I’m wondering if you are familiar with it and recommend it, or if there are any other concerns I should be aware of with this product.
purebondplywood.com
Along the same lines, I’d like to know what type of materials you would recommend we use as the backing for a bookshelf. We’d like to construct a wood bookshelf to contain children’s building blocks, and this question will come up for us as we attempt to make DIY versions of other types of furniture for our child and our home. These types of bookcases typically have a particle board or fiberboard backing. Wanting to avoid the formaldehyde in those, I’m wondering if the PureBond plywood would work, or if there is a thinner (lightweight) option that is safe. We thought maybe a lower grade of pine would be one option, since the aesthetics aren’t important for the backing which will hardly be seen anyway. Other ideas?
Final question – is Baltic Birch plywood safe? I see alot of children’s items are made with that. They’re typically items that are sold by higher-quality brands and websites that sell natural-fiber items, but I’m always wondering if that type of wood is safe.
Debra’s Answer
PureBond formaldehyde-free plywood is fine. I haven’t used it, but I don’t see a problem with it.
You can use masonite as a backing for a bookcase. It’s just wood particles pressed together with steam. No resins.
Baltic Birch plywood is made from solid birch veneer, cross-banded, and laminated with exterior grade adhesive. Exterior grade adhesive is less toxic than interior grade. I’ve never used or inspected this plywood, so I have no first hand experience, and I also couldn’t find a MSDS to check for toxic ingredients. I would contact the manufacturer of those toy products and see if you can get more information about the material. It looks to be safer and higher quality than other plywoods, but I’m lacking information.
How Toxic Chemicals Can Make You Fat, and How Detoxing Can Make You Skinny
My guest today is Genita M. Mason, HHP, NC, MH, Founder and Medical Director of The Biosanctuary Health Clinic & Retreat. We’ll be talking about all the toxic “obesogens” and how these toxic chemicals make people gain weight, plus the plan to lose weight by removing them from your body. “So refreshing to get into this area,” she told me, “I didn’t realize what I had going on until a woman who had gone through over 30 weight loss programs in the last 12 years came into the clinic for something else and begin melting it off.” Patients come to Genita’s retreat for her advanced detox program based on orthomolecular and naturpathic models. In 2014 she was given the American Naturopathic Medical Association’s ‘High Achievement’ Award. I met her in 2010 after she won a human rights award for the High Impact Biological Medicine “Green Body & Mind Medical Model” she developed which practices the best of Functional Medicine for a long list of today’s epidemic physical and mental diseases and metabolic disorders such as addiction. www.biosanctuary.com
Purchase Genita’s new book The Science of Weight Loss from amazon.com. Read more about the book and Genita’s detox program at http://thescienceoflosingweight.com/
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How Toxic Chemicals Can Make You Fat and How Detoxing Can Make You Skinny
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Genita M. Mason, HHP, NC, MH
Date of Broadcast: January 08, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free. It’s Thursday, January 8th 2014. And it’s cold! It’s cold even here in Florida. It’s 55° today. I know that doesn’t sound very cold to some of you, but that’s very cold for us. And did you hear in the news up in the northern part of the United States, it’s 40° and 50° below 0. Very cold today!
But we’re going to talk about warm things. We’re going to talk about how toxic chemicals can make you fat and how detoxing toxic chemicals, removing them from your body can make you skinny.
My guest today really knows what she’s talking about on this subject. Her name is Genita M. Mason, HHP, NC, MH. She’s the founder and medical director of the Biosanctuary Health Clinic and Retreat. I met her a few years ago when I learned about her work, helping people with mental health issues by removing toxic chemicals from their bodies.
You just go to her retreat, she puts you in a non-toxic environment, she feeds you the right organic foods, she makes special programs for you to take the right supplements and everything and people get better. She found that as a side effect of this, people losing weight. So she started looking at what’s happening with weight.
We’re going to hear all about this today, all about what toxic chemicals make you fat, where they’re found, what to do instead, so keep listening.
Hi, Genita.
GENITA MASON: Hi, Debra! Thank you for having me. I couldn’t be more happier than to be on your show taking this off for the new book.
DEBRA: Thank you. I couldn’t be more happier than having you here and having you kick off your book on my show.
GENITA MASON: Yeah, it is so refreshing to be talking on this subject because I know that this is going to touch so many people and help so many people out of the mystery of why they’re not losing weight when they should be as well.
DEBRA: Yeah. You mentioned that one of your clients had gone through over 30 listed weight loss programs.
GENITA MASON: She listed over 30. You name any of those popular ones and she’s done it.
DEBRA: Yeah. Yeah. I know because I’ve done a lot of them too and I think a lot of my listeners have. So just before we start talking about the book and the program, I want to ask you just a couple of questions so that the listeners understand who you are and what you do.
First of all, could you tell us what all those letters after your name mean, HHP, NC, MH?
GENITA MASON: I’m licensed by the Board of Naturopathic Medicine as a holistic health care provider. It means that I don’t have the emergency room and I don’t have a prescription pad, which I don’t need because when people follow my programs, they’ll never need one of those.
DEBRA: Right!
GENITA MASON: So I’m happy with that. And then the other acronym is ‘nutritional consultant’. But beyond that, I’m a nutrition biochemist. Just remember that all doctors before the 1930s who were biological medical doctors – now, I practice biological medicine. They had biochemistry degrees. To be a doctor, you had to understand how the body works because you were using natural substances before big pharma got a hold of the standards of care.
So really, I lean more on science than I do anything that I learned in school. I’m also having the blessing of being mentored by famous doctors, biological medical doctors who trained early on in the early 1900s, 1930s and 1940s such as Dr. Abram Hoffer, Dr. Alighieri and Dr. Thomas who I work with here in Costa Rica.
DEBRA: So tell us how you became interested in approaching medical problems from your viewpoint? How did you veer off the path of becoming just a standard medical doctor?
GENITA MASON: Well, at least to me, because I’ve trying to have been involved in this for decades, it’s only common sense that the body has – call it a ‘divine design’ or call it ‘[inaudible 00:05:26] biochemistry’ if you want to approach it scientifically. There is a way that the body is designed to function and that design has evolved over three million years with the human cells surviving and developing into what it has over three million years now.
Call it your spirit or anything you want, but our bodies are a product of the earth. We need that relationship with good whole foods and homeostasis, a supportive and enriching environment in order to thrive.
And then when you inject a toxic chemical, what it does is it robs – not only is it toxic, but it robs the body of nutrients that the cell needs, that every cell needs to function in the way that it was designed to function. And when that design is thwarted, when it can’t do that, it’s a cascade event.
And this is chronic. I mean, if it’s once in a while, of course, you’re not going to suffer probably. But when it’s chronic such as it is today because of the environment that we live in and if we don’t know how to protect ourselves, when it’s chronic, things start going bad. And when they go bad, first, we’ll have a series of symptoms and then of course, they’ll develop into disease if we don’t intervene.
So toxins don’t belong in the body. That’s the bottomline. They steal, they rob nutrients from the body and they destroy tissue as a result. They destroy the cells as a result.
And it’s not only that. It’s what they do to our bacteria. We’re actually 10:1 bacterial over cells. Don’t get a little bit too much in the limelight. What’s happening today is with GMO foods and the toxins in our food, the chemicals in our food, it’s wiping out our good stuff.
There’s the American Gut Project. Everybody should look up the American Gut Project, the group of rockstar scientists that are taking samples from people all over the world and putting a lot of data together. These chemicals, our gut flora, we have lots of bacteria, healthy bacteria, microbes that were there a hundred years ago that are no longer there because they’ve been chemically destroyed. So that gives the bad bacteria, the gram negative mostly, more opportunity. You just give it a little bit. You give it an inch and it’ll take a mile.
And I’ll tell you being a practitioner that’s been testing my patients, because though I only use supplements that don’t kill people, I’m more careful than psychiatrists. I test everybody. I test every functional aspect of the human body, what’s going on under the hood, the gut health, the endocrinology before I write up targeted nutritional therapies and strategies for them, treatment strategies.
Fifteen years ago or twenty years ago when I started my private practice, I rarely saw bacterial dysbiosis, rarely. And today, I rarely don’t see it.
DEBRA: Wow!
GENITA MASON: Yeah, that’s a wow! And I can tell you from the GMOs, the chem trails, the radiation now that we have, it’s an epidemic problem. We need to learn if we’re going to survive while the government wise up (give them time to wise up) to strategize how to survive. That is identifying your routes of exposure in your home and workplace and diet and protecting yourself, getting rid of it, making wiser choices.
DEBRA: Well, we’re about to go to break, but before we do, because I know if I ask you another question, you’re going to talk for another few minutes, let’s take this short period of time to say that you have a new book, The Science of Losing Weight, which we’re about to talk about when we come back and I have an advanced copy here, a PDF, I’m looking at it and it’s incredible! It’s not available yet, but if you go to her website, you can get an advanced copy and she will send you a password so that you can read it right now even though it’s not available. I mean, she can’t send you the actual book. You can read it online with a password just as soon as you buy it.
GENITA MASON: And I actually think it started right away on the program because the Solution section is pretty much done and as well get a free copy of A Gut Feeling, the small intestinal bacterial overgrowth recipe book that collaborates with it.
DEBRA: Right! And you only get the free ebook of A Gut Feeling if you order it within an hour of the end of the show. So you can go order it right now if you want during the break or you can wait until the end, but order it right away. Go to Biosanctuary.com. It’s right there on the front page. You have to kind of scroll down a little bit, but you’ll see it. It’s really easy to find.
So you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Genita M. Mason. She’s the founder and medical director of the Biosanctuary Health Clinic and Retreat and we’re going to be talking about the The Science of Losing Weight. Stay tuned.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Genita M. Mason, founder and medical director of the Biosanctuary Health Clinic and Retreat. I’m going to keep giving her website over and over, Biosanctuary.com, so that you can make sure that you can go there and order her new book and get immediate access by special password. Nobody else in the world has this yet except you, listeners. She’s giving us this, very special.
So Genita, I’m just going to let you start talking because I know you have so much to say.
GENITA MASON: I have a battery of words.
DEBRA: Go ahead!
GENITA MASON: And by the way, I would love to share some of the warmth and the heat here in Costa Rica, the clinic with you there in Florida.
DEBRA: Oh, thank you. What’s the temperature there?
GENITA MASON: Pardon me?
DEBRA: What’s the temperature there?
GENITA MASON: It’s humid. It’s 85°, 90° or so. It’s warm. It’s warm, but it’s great. It’s great for losing weight.
DEBRA: That’s right! You don’t have to go in the sun. All you have to do is sit outside.
GENITA MASON: Right, right. Well, yeah, or both.
DEBRA: Or both.
GENITA MASON: So the first thing that I want to – and I want to lay the foundation, the perspective.
DEBRA: Okay.
GENITA MASON: Everyone is trained in all diets (most or all diets generally speaking), the approach is everyone is concerned about calories, reducing calories and burning them. That’s the traditional view of how to lose weight and we need to stay exact because the core value now is that if you have –
You know, everybody fluctuates by over 10 lbs. We have holidays, we get sedentary sometimes and we’re usually, “Argh! I’m just a mess.” But if you have 20, 30, 40 and anything above to lose, you have likely – and I say that, because I’m a scientific, I can’t do 100%, but there’s a strong indication, very strong (I’d say 90% strong indication) that you have an actual underlying medical condition or metabolic disorder.
That disease or metabolic disorder needs to be exposed through testing and then in evidence-based way, strategize a solution and a targeted nutritional therapy to correct it.
How many people do we know that diet, that reduce their caloric intake by 500, 1000 and a long-term, they are dedicated, they’re doing the work, they’re exercising and they’re not losing?
DEBRA: A lot of people.
GENITA MASON: Yes. Yes! My daughter included when she got hit by the mold infection. And it broke my heart. She’s a young woman, 23 years old, had the world at her fingertips, never had to think about what she was eating and here, she was locked in a prison – I called it ‘prison’ and depravation. You can’t have things that you want without paying dearly for it.
DEBRA: I know that story.
GENITA MASON: I think everybody that has the weight to lose knows it today. And that’s because it’s not about – these diet books, if you look, we have more diet books, we have more gyms, we have more personal trainers, we have more theories, we have more different – it’s like rearranging furniture on the Titanic. None of it is working! If it works, it works a little while and then you’re just seeing it right back, right?
DEBRA: Right.
GENITA MASON: So we need to look at why, ask the question why because we didn’t have this problem a hundred years ago, we didn’t have this problem 50 years ago. It’s an epidemic now. And the reason is – me being a toxicologist, being an orthomolecular and epigenetic practitioner, I’m a toxicologist, I have to look at people’s environments and how it’s affecting them to heal them, any condition – schizophrenia, addiction, cancer, you name it. You have to look at the organism’s environment. I’ve been doing that for 20 years to develop strategies to help people heal.
So when I started looking at the weight issues of today, how people are gaining weight, can’t lose it or lose it and gain it right back – and I did this with my whole heart because my daughter was affected. We have to remember that. That’s what woke me up to all of these, to help my daughter. So I used everything I know about the environment and how it affects humans. I was asking the question in my research, “What has caused this?”
My daughter never had an extra pound. She was an athlete, a second degree black belt. She trained almost every day for 12 years. She was a cheerleader. She had solid muscles. And bam! On 5”3 ½ frame, she gained 50 lbs.
DEBRA: Wow! That’s a lot for that size.
GENITA MASON: Yeah, mold infections, mold infections. So through that, the truth started surfacing. And then I started treating people specifically to losing weight. I would never treat when people would come to me for losing weight, they’d say, “You know it’s not about losing weight. It’s all about soul, body, mind wellness.” Well, you tell that to a person that’s been trying to lose weight for 10, 20, 5 years, they’re like, “No, it’s about losing weight.”
So anyway, I’ll tell you a list for your listeners so that they can start ingesting this and changing their perspective about what they have to address to get well and lose the weight if they want to lose. The toxic environment, both voluntary and involuntary, in the food with GMO’s, the chemicals, in tap water – even in showering in tap water, [inaudible 00:19:11] exposure.
GMOs are really bad because of what they do to the bacteria flora of the gut. All these toxic chemicals being ingested, being delivered breathing them – even your saliva, when you breathe, if you’re in a toxic environment like Los Angeles, New York, swallowing your saliva is actually toxic. And we can’t avoid that, but we can do things to protect ourselves and get rid of those toxins efficiently before they accumulate into our tissues.
But all these toxins, collectively, they’re called ‘body burden’. It seems there’s actually a name now for the bio accumulation of the toxic chemicals in your environment and diet.
So this bio accumulation, which by the way, the gut is the first one to solve and the first one taken out, which is very unfortunate because gut health just feeds into the health of the entire body. It says in Chinese medicine, “All health starts in the gut.”
So here’s a list of the things that these toxic chemicals are causing, the conditions and diseases that they’re causing that are preventing people from being able to lose weight and causing them to gain weight when they shouldn’t be.
And what I mean by that, I know many people at eat healthy, that are exercising, that have active lifestyle and they’re paying [inaudible 00:20:34] trying not to gain weight and they are anyway.
DEBRA: Yes.
GENITA MASON: So here’s a list. Intestinal inflammation. These toxins cause these things – intestinal inflammation, leaky gut syndrome, digestive malabsorption, insulin resistance, sluggish liver and pancreatic function. When you can’t release enough enzymes to break down the fats, proteins and carbs that you eat, what’s going to happen? You’re going to deposit, right? And also, they’re going to sit around in the gut and cause bacterial dysbiosis, which gives you another cascade of problems.
DEBRA: And I have to interrupt you. Wait, wait, wait. Before you go on with the list, we have to go to break and then you can continue.
GENITA MASON: Okay, thank you.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Genita M. Mason. She’s the founder and medical director of the Biosanctuary Health Clinic and Retreat and author of her new book, Science of Losing Weight. During this break, you can go to her website, Biosanctuary.com, order the book. And if you order it within the next hour, you’ll get a free ebook of recipes that go along with her way of losing weight. You can also get immediate access through a special website with a special password because the book isn’t in print yet. But you can, as a listener, get it today. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Genita M. Mason. She’s the founder and medical director of the Biosanctuary Health Clinic and Retreat and author of her new book, Science of Losing Weight, which is available to you, my listeners, today by a special password if you go to her website, Biosanctuary.com and order it. You don’t have to wait until it’s out in a couple of months or whatever it is. You can get that information today and start using it to lose weight.
So tell us more, Genita. You were telling us about the list of body conditions that are produced by toxic chemicals that affect your ability to…
GENITA MASON: Exactly, disorders actually.
DEBRA: Yeah, disorders, yes. So go on with that list.
GENITA MASON: So we ended with adrenal fatigue when you are actually low cortisol. Cortisol helps to convert food fuel to energy as well. So that could be a product of weight gain. Blood sugar disregulation, which of course, is another metabolic disorder.
So there’s a cascade of events that happen especially when you hit on the neuroendocrine system because the neuroendoctrine system, your glands that produce the hormones in your body, which are also affected by your ability to digest that is impaired with this toxic chemicals and what they do to your gut, they cannot help the body convert food to fuel.
So the next one here on the list is bacterial dysbiosis, which is huge. It’s the big one today. And you can look this stuff up. There’s plenty of information on the Internet now these days. You can look this stuff up. These little polysaccharides have been in a clinical trial, injected into rats and literally, in weeks, it made them obese. And that is actually the most popular gram negative bacteria that people express when they develop bacterial dysbiosis. So it’s a great theory. You’ve got an evidence-based direct link.
And then we create toxic gut syndrome. This is something I’m very familiar with because I’ve worked with mental health patients for many years and I was clearing the gut. That’s the foundational ethic in my program – first gut health and neuroendocrine health. And through clearing the gut, I have actually cleared schizophrenia through clearing the gut toxicity syndrome.
That’s how these toxic chemicals, the bad bacteria (usually gram negative) output goes through the intestines, through to the bloodstream straight to the brain and completely disrupt brain chemistry. So that’s another one. And they also will cause you to gain weight or make it very hard because collectively, these toxins, not only do they hurt the gut, but they also impair or completely disable the mitochondria, which is the energy processing center of every cell. It’s like the nuclear power plant. It impairs the bio accumulation of toxins. It impairs or many times, it disables that mitochondria from being able to burn fats, carbohydrates and proteins. And that’s actually evidenced in the lab test that I’ve done.
Let’s see here, yeast and molds and fungal infections. Of course, my family was hit by the mold infection once. Let’s see. So all of these combined will cause multiple chemical sensitivity, which will also cause people to gain weight. The list is endless, but those are the highlights that I’ve been working with.
DEBRA: I used to work in a doctor’s office with people who had multiple chemical sensitivities. Well, that happened after I knew about my own chemical sensitivities. But in my own body, I gained a lot of weight after I started being chemically sensitive. I didn’t used to weight as much as I ended up weighting. I weight a lot less now, but at one point, I weight 299 lbs.
GENITA MASON: Hmmm… you’re thinking, “Before I’m going to go to 300,” right? Everybody’s got their limit.
DEBRA: No, it actually said on the scale 299 lbs. But I could see people, a lot of the patients that came into this office that I was working in (this is many, many, many years ago), a lot of them would either come in overweight or I would just watch their bodies just balloon up. And it wasn’t because they were eating a lot of junk food. We had these people on elimination allergy diets and stuff and they would just get fatter and fatter and fatter. And so I know it’s the chemicals. I know it’s the chemicals.
GENITA MASON: And you know, we don’t not only now have the chemicals, but that sets the stage for insulin resistance because insulin resistance alone, it causes false hunger because by the nature of this metabolic disorder, if the insulin cannot get the fuel into the cell to set off the brain’s hunger alarms, you’ll just continue to eat far more than you need to be satiated. So you have to shut off the brain’s alarm system that made you hungry in the first place, right?
But also, if the fuel cannot get into the cell, guess what? It’s going to get deposited.
DEBRA: Yeah.
GENITA MASON: And also, the visceral fat issue, the [inaudible 00:32:23] belly – I love how these things are so common now, they have their own name. The liver will convert all carbo – well, not all, but carbohydrates that are not used, it will convert those to fat. And that’s usually where you get the start of your visceral fat, that fat around the gut.
That’s just one of them. But if you have insulin resistance, that means you’ve been eating a lot of processed food, which also means that you have a chemical toxicity issues as well – inflammation, leaky gut, et cetera, et cetera. There’s a list of possibility, which is why really you want to test. You never want to go into any kind of health program without finding out what is going on underneath, so you can really get the best reward, the best kickback from your effort.
My heart goes out to people. Honestly, my heart goes out to people. I have friends that I know how they eat, I know how they take care of themselves, I know how it hurts. It hurts their self image, it hurts how they view the world, how people sees them change. It’s just sad, it’s a superficial world. But I’m not approaching it from that, I’m approaching it from truly a health issue. It impairs your quality of life. It impairs them what they can do. And also, going into older age with the issue really sets you back.
So we want to look at the solution, the truth, the real solution to this. We can’t just be dancing in the dark. The calorie burning is not going to happen while you have these metabolic disorders. You’re just going to have to work hard and people give up. They’ll do exactly what they’re told to do on a diet and it barely works. So the sacrifices that they have to make, they’re huge and you can only do that for so long until you’re going to give up. Come on, we’re humans.
DEBRA: We need to eat.
GENITA MASON: We’re not [inaudible 00:34:21] to do something regardless of what the input is.
DEBRA: Right. We need to go to break again. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Genita M. Mason, founder and medical director of the Biosanctuary Health Clinic and Retreat. You can go to her website, Biosanctuary.com and get her new book, Science of Losing Weight. It’s not in print yet, but if you buy it today, you’ll get a password so that you can get access to it online.
I’m looking at right now. it’s full of information. All the things that she’s talking about, she gives the solution, so you get all the understanding on how the toxic chemicals make your body not able to lose weight and to gain weight. All the solutions are there. So it’s Biosanctuary.com. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Genita M. Mason. She’s the founder and medical director of the Biosanctuary Health Clinic and Retreat. Currently, she’s in Costa Rica. Is your clinic now in Costa Rica or do you have other locations?
GENITA MASON: Yes, it is. That’s Dr. Thomas who I mentored with for five years now. He’s 74 years old. He’s been in service to others for 44 years and wishes to retire and made me his successor here. So I’m actually taking over the clinic here – the clinic, retreat and ecospa, a gorgeous place in Sta. Theresa to help him retire and there’s going to be changing of the guards.
I do practiced still in the States, but that is on a very specific timeline. I come in to do the 10-day retreat for people who simply cannot make it to Costa Rica. But it’s more fun and much more beautiful and enchanting here.
DEBRA: Yes!
GENITA MASON: You know, Debra, I know we don’t have much more time. I really want the solutions out there. I want to help people engage and tell them what they need to do and start looking at to start getting well.
DEBRA: That was exactly what I was going to say. I want to make sure that you tell people what they can find in your book with that regard and also about the 10-day intensive treatment cycle for the Science of Losing Weight. It’s beginning on February 10th. Go!
GENITA MASON: Sure, absolutely! Here’s what I’m giving away. What I want to see is just change the entire ground, folks losing weight globally, how people look at how to do this. I’m actually giving away in the book the entire solution. Well, I practice here at the clinic if people are handed here in the clinic. The only thing that ican’t do in the book is provide the individual part of the nutritional therapies and strategies, but there is foundational program here because a lot of people can’t even get their tests done before the come in. So we use a foundational protocol while we wait for the test, something to get more specific to their individual biochemistry.
But everything that I know that is causing weight gain and making it hard to lose is in the foundational protocol, which I share and process. It’s a 60-day strategy that I share in the book in the solution section. All the instructions are there, everything from your diet through your targeted nutritional therapies, what vitamins and minerals that you need to be taking, your smoothie in the morning, the juicing in the evening, the bug pillars, how to get rid of bacterial dysbiosis. That actually leads in to some of the solutions, what they need to start addressing.
And of course, it’s always best and I encourage even when they’re working on their own to get your lab work, which I tell in the solution section which labs to get.
So you want to eliminate small intestinal bacterial overgrowth – if it’s present, any fungus and mold. This, you want to look at, intestinal inflammation as well as inflammation elsewhere because that can be disrupting your neuroendocrine system and making it hard to lose weight.
DEBRA: Right.
GENITA MASON: You want to look at toxic gut syndrome. If you have a lot of mental fatigue, physical fatigue, you’re really depressed a lot, anxious a lot, you want to look at toxic gut syndrome because that also causes weight gain, but it’s an indicator that you’ve got some serious mitochondria issues going on.
You want to replace the helpful microbial gut flora and that’s with the use of probiotics and organic colostrum. You want to feed your mitochondria. The B vitamins, by the way, are consumed – many of them are consumed by gut bacteria. Do you know because gut bacteria is a living being, it has a diet? And its diet is actually get access to the nutrients before you do because it sit on the wall of the intestines. They consume these nutrients, so they never get a chance to get into your blood system.
DEBRA: Oh, I suddenly understood that just now when you said that. The mitochondria, which are not – I mean, not the mitochondria, but all these microorganisms, which are co-existing in our bodies with their separate organisms (they’re not our cells), they’re robbing our cells of the nutrition because they’re right there to eat it up right where we’re eating it, right where the food is coming down. They’re the first ones to get it and grab it and then there’s no nutrition for us.
GENITA MASON: And specifically for the mitochondria. The B vitamins, they love the B vitamins.
DEBRA: Oh, geez! I just never understood that before.
GENITA MASON: I love it when people get the aha especially someone like you, the queen of green who’s been asked this for how many years. I love it when I get to share an aha, something so cool!
DEBRA: Oh, my God! No wonder my body is not getting nutrition. We could be taking all these supplements and everything and…
GENITA MASON: You know what? You go get a Myer’s – here at the clinic, I provide Myer’s cocktails, which are intravenous IV’s in the 10-day program because I have to bypass the gut. To get the show going, I have to bypass the gut. While we heal the gut and get that working well, you just go in and get some Myer’s cocktail. We also do the intramusculars. I just say drench people with the B vitamins to wake up that mitochondria.
DEBRA: Wow!
GENITA MASON: You want to do liver, kidney, skin and lymph detox. It’s just general detox that we’re using – infrared sauna, a lot of ozone. I have my patients drinking ozone. That kills the anaerobic bad bacteria. It’s very specific. It’s beautiful. Ozone does not touch at all the healthy cells. It is very specific to anything that’s not supposed to be there.
DEBRA: Great!
GENITA MASON: I love the intelligence of the human body. I love it!
DEBRA: Yeah, I do too.
GENITA MASON: You want robust antioxidant support because of oxidative stress. It’s of course married to toxic assault. The antioxidant support will protect you from lots of exposures while you study yours and eliminate them. And of course, there’s radiation, chem. trails, fluorides, pesticides, VPA and particularly GMO detox and protection that you want to look at.
I give instructions in the book for all of this. It’s a 60-day program that is detailed in the book with the SIBO food phases (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth phases) because you want to eat foods that are easily digested in the small intestine, so they don’t drift down into the larger and sit around and make more bacteria for you.
Now, real quick before we sign off here because I know we’re getting close, I want to share with people that…
DEBRA: Four minutes, we have four minutes.
GENITA MASON: Okay. There’s a documentary that’s being done on this. I’m even trying to get the Environmental Working Group to get involved. There’s a documentary being done on this because this is a groundbreaking approach. The evidence-based, scientifically evidence-based approach to losing weight is groundbreaking. And also, it’s comprehensive as it is here in the way we practice the solution here in the clinic. We have phenomenal results here in ten days. I have a patient, I have a doctorate patient here right now. She’s only five days in. She came up to me yesterday. She’s British and she says, “Genita, I’ve lost an inch off of my waist!”
Anyway, it is groundbreaking. So what I’m offering because I want to get a big group in here. I want to get 10 people, which we’ve already got three sign-ups, but I want to get 10 people here to go through the 10-day program.
Now, this 10-day program that I provided, usually, it’s $5400. It’s accommodation, lab testing, it’s all included. Everything is included. The supplements for 30 days, the detox diet, the SIBO diet, the education, all the infrared sauna, the ozone therapy, the IV’s, it’s all included. You could see it on my website. But I’m actually offering this you have to sign releases that we can do all the interviews and show your before and after’s and everything. It’s just ten days. And then there’ll be a follow-up at 30 days. We’ll reach out to you at home.
So I’m offering this program for $3600 and that’s everything. That’s accommodations, everything for ten days to be in the weight loss program, The Science of Weight Loss for the documentary. So that’s a real big opportunity.
DEBRA: That is a big opportunity.
GENITA MASON: That will probably never happen again.
DEBRA: Yeah.
GENITA MASON: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when you look at the therapies, I’m pulling a rabbit out of my hat, but that’s all I’ve been doing for 20 years.
DEBRA: What a great opportunity!
GENITA MASON: Pardon me?
DEBRA: It’s such a great opportunity.
GENITA MASON: Yeah, yeah. It absolutely is. And it sets the stage, it really locks you in. I had people call it the ‘5-star human carwash’ and that’s exactly what it is. You come in feeling however you feel, loaded down, fatigued, et cetera, et cetera and you leave literally with the consciousness of the ‘cosmic 3-year old’, I call it.
DEBRA: Yeah.
GENITA MASON: Life in its infancy again. When you’re in solution mode, when you find a solution and you see it actually working finally, it’s like a world that’s flat. This bowling ball just lifts off people’s soldiers and their whole consciousness and perspective shifts. There’s hope again. There’s joy again. You’re not loaded down with this monkey on your back. We don’t want to be there.
DEBRA: And it’s something…
GENITA MASON: Well, there’s one thing here that I do want you in my back, but…
DEBRA: You’re doing it all at once when you go do a program like that. You do it all at once and you see the big change, then it’s much easier to then come home and continue to do it than doing it in little bits and pieces over time.
GENITA MASON: Exactly! And because it is new information and a new approach for people, there’s a learning curve especially when you do it at home. It has to be your hobby base, that’s what I tell people. It’s a whole new hobby, learning the mechanics of this, following the program, making time for the mechanics of the program.
So when you come here and we engage you and you get into the rhythm and you get into the flow, the daily flows here…
DEBRA: I have to interrupt you just because we only have ten seconds left and I want to make sure that I give your website again. It’s Biosanctuary.com. Thank you so much for being with us. You can go to her website and find out more about the book, find out more about the program. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well!
help needed-neighbors fumigation
Question from Jenny
Help-our neighbors just fumigated their home today. The house is behind us about 50 feet. But never the less on the side of babies room. Their home is entirely tented. I am hoping if we close our windows it will be enough. Do we need to relocate until this is done?? Thank you so much!!
Debra’s Answer
The whole point of tenting is to enclose the toxic fumigation gas so it doesn’t escape.
I wasn’t able to find anything on the internet about people being harmed outside of the tent.
But I did find an article that explains the safety measures used in fumigation: Are Termite Tenting & Fumigation Safe?
This article also says that once the home has been aired and cleaned properly, there is no residue of the fumigant left. They warn that tenting and fumigating does not offer protection against future termite infestations.
A Unique Handmade Body Soap
My guest today is Cynthia A. Young Jennings, owner of Sweet Harvest Farms in Tampa, Florida. She runs a thriving cottage industry that makes soaps for women, men, and dogs. C.J. has formulated a soap recipe all her own that consists of natural, soothing and luxurious organic ingredients to make a soap that “not only leaves you squeaky clean but also give s you soft, supple and silky skin.” I can vouch for this. I bought a big bar of her soap at a holiday crafts fair and had to have her on the show. C.J. has been an artist longer than she can remember. Painting on anything that “didn’t move”, including old cupboard doors, chairs and even her father’s old Army boots, made her offerings a bit eclectic. Even during her 20 years in the medical field CJ always had her hand in creating. Years later, opening her store in Destin, Fl. , she decided to offer a little bit of everything from antiques to handmade primitive dolls. Included in this eclectic mix was Potpourri and Handmade Soap. Always being a perfectionist and wanting to give her customers only the best, she found the Soap and Potpourri not up to her standards. Many Soaps that are sold as “homemade” are actually produced in huge warehouses? These “soap blocks” are shipped in large quantities which others re-melt, mix with scent, color, blend them with synthetic Glycerin, and call them “Glycerin Soaps”. Many contain chemicals, preservatives, Parabens and Petroleum by-products that are eventually absorbed into your bloodstream through your skin not to mention the damage they create to the environment when washed down the drain or thrown out into the garbage. True Soaps don’t melt, become slimy, or leave a greasy residue on your skin or shower—AND true soaps must have a cure date on their label. Sweet Harvest Farms products do not contain Parabens, Sodium Lauryl Sulfates, Phosphates, Harsh Chemicals, Mineral Oils or Petroleum products of any kind. C.J.’s experience in the medical field has given her the ability to formulate her own patented recipes for her handmade soap, lip balm, she butter bars, roll on perfume, tooth powder and more. There are very few true Soap makers left that stay true to the old fashion method of Soap making used hundreds of years ago. Vitamins A-E, Organic and All Natural Shea Butter, Flaxseed Oil, Olive Oil, Castor Oil, Jojoba Oil, Palm Oil (sustainable), Coconut Oil and others. are what customers say make this Soap nurturing and hydrating. www.sweetharvestfarms.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
A Unique Handmade Body Soap
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Cynthia A. Young Jennings
Date of Broadcast: January 07, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free. It’s Wednesday, January 7th 2015. I got that right. Do you find that it’s difficult the first few days of the year that it’s not 2014 anymore and that you have to remember this new number, 2015? I seem to actually be getting better doing that as the years go by. It’s lovely to be starting a new year.
Today, we’re going to be talking about soap. Soap is a lovely thing. I love buying handmade soap. And I’ve been using handmade soap for years. There’s a big difference between soap and detergent and how it interacts with your skin and gets it clean. But even amongst handmade soaps, there is a huge difference in how soap is made.
I trust my guest that I have today because one of the things that I love to do is go around to farmer’s markets and fresh markets and crop fairs and any place where people are making things by hand. As I’ve been doing that, I keep seeing this same woman over and over. I see her and her soaps over and over and I keep thinking what great soaps these look like over and over. I have even taken her card and listed her on my website, given her a link on Debra’s List at DebrasList.com and then finally, I bought a bar of soap.
Just over Christmas time, I went to a holiday fair and I saw her soap and I learned some new things. She had a beautiful display. And from her display, I learned some things about her soap that I never knew about soap. And so I bought the soap and it’s very different from any other soap that I’ve purchased before or used on my skin.
She says that it’s – I’m going to tell you the quote – she says that her soap “not only leaves you squeaky clean, but also gives you soft, supple and silky skin.” And that’s exactly right. I can vouch for that. It’s a heavy bar of soap. It doesn’t just melt away.
So we’re going to learn about the differences between soaps, what’s toxic. You might have that’s toxic in your soap and what truly old-fashioned soap is. We’re going to learn all about that today.
My guest is Cynthia A. Young Jennings. She’s the owner of Sweet Harvest Farms in Tampa, Florida.
Hi, Cynthia. We’re going to call you CJ because you like to be called CJ.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: That’s fine. If you say, “Hey, you,” that’ll work.
DEBRA: Okay!
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: And let me apologize. First of all, I leave close to an air base and they’re doing training. So every once in a while, you might hear jets in the background.
DEBRA: Totally fine! Thanks for telling us what that sound is in case we hear it. So Cynthia, how did you get to be a soap maker?
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Well, gosh! I had owned a store before. And it was wholesaling what I thought was ‘true soap’, but it was leaving me itchy and dry like most products that you buy in the market commercially. Since I have a medical background and I did work in a dermatology office for the doctors therein, I’m a sponge. I learn and read everything. I wanted to be a surgeon at one time, but that’s another story. That’s why I stayed in the medical field so long.
So I decided to start doing research. And I wanted everything I do, I do with passion and with a vengeance. So I actually researched soap making for actually two years before I actually took the plunge because I wanted to make sure that what I created was going to be the best thing on the market.
Of course, my family and I are the guinea pigs. So after a couple of trials, because I was developing my own recipes (so these recipes aren’t found anywhere, but on my head), I tried a couple of recipes and gave them to my family and friends and they’re like, “Well, yeah, this is great, but this or whatever.” And finally, the third try, I came with what I think is a totally different bar of soap than you will find anywhere else.
DEBRA: It’s totally a different bar of soap than I have ever seen.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Well, it’s my own recipe. I put in there what I think your skin needs or actually know what your skin needs to thrive. I have always put 100% of my ingredients on my back label, which my mother is like, “Why? People will know what you’re using” and I said, “Yes, but they won’t know my recipe.” There’s a big difference.
DEBRA: That’s right, there is.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: it is a big difference. I mean, you could lay out everything for someone to make pancakes, but if they don’t know the recipe, they don’t know how much of everything to put in.
And actually, starting this year, the FDA is actually starting to clamp down on people and fine them if they don’t have 100% of their ingredients on the back of the bar and they are also finding people that claim to have soap when it’s truly not soap and only a beauty bar.
Dove, last year, actually knew this was coming and jumped on the bandwagon to avoid the fine. And so when you go on the store now and look at the Dove packaging, it now says ‘beauty bar’.
DEBRA: Well, before we hear more about your soap that is so fabulous, I’d like you to tell us more about what you’ve learned about soap and additives that are in it and things like that, so that people can understand what the issues are about why they should use your soap and not another soap. So just tell us more about this whole thing of soap versus beauty bar, so that people can understand more about the labeling of soap. What is soap?
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Well, what it turns out, there are several manufacturers all over the country and overseas that do make soap. But what happens is they replace all the good stuff with synthetic lathering agents and harsh chemicals. That is what makes the bar of soap lather.
Now, if you have a good recipe and have the right combination of oils in a bar of soap, you don’t need lathering agents because the combination of oils can make a beautiful lather on its own.
And then what they do is they also siphon out the glycerine, which is a very hot commodity. This is what your skin need. But they siphon it out to sell it to high-end cosmetic companies. And then they’ll replace it because now the softening agent has been removed.
So then they’ll replace it with mineral oil, which comes from biodiesel fuel. They’ll also put in lanolin, which comes from the sheet wool. And by the way, we have been led to believe for many, many years that lanolin is actually good for you. It is not. Your skin wants moisture constantly. And what lanolin does is it actually puts a film over your skin so that moisture cannot penetrate it. If you stop and think about it, lanolin comes from sheet wool. When you see it rain on a sheet, what does the water do?
DEBRA: It runs off.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: it rolls off, exactly. And that is because it puts that film. It’s a natural protective film for the sheet obviously, but we, as humans, we need the moisture.
Then they put it lauryl sulfate for preservatives and chemicals. Your skin is the largest organ in your body and it absorbs everything you put on it, whether it’s make-up, deodorant or whatever. So of course, all these that you’re putting not only into your body, but you’re washing down the brain – not your brain, the drain – which actually, I shouldn’t laugh because all these chemicals are actually stored in body fat and in your brain.
DEBRA: Yes, they are stored in your brain.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Yes, everything. I mean, I could really go off on that one, but that’s for another interview. So everything that goes down the drain, it’s also not good for the environment.
DEBRA: Yes, yes. You’re exactly right.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: It’s really scary. We’re so used to just believing what’s told to us. We really need to become a nation of label-readers. I know when I started really concentrating on labels, my husband and I went to a grocery store and we spent probably four hours – we didn’t buy a thing, but spent four hours going up and down the aisle just reading labels and what is in the products that we use for our skin, our hair, what we eat. It’s really scary.
DEBRA: We need to go to break, but when we come back, I want to hear more about labels. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is CJ – well, I guess I’ll say Cynthia A. Young Jennings also known as CJ, owner of Sweet Harvest Farms in Tampa, Florida. Her website is SweetHarvestFarms.com. She makes incredible soap, which we’re going to continue to talk about after the break.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Cynthia A. Young Jennings, owner of Sweet Harvest Farms, that’s at SweetHarvestFarms.com and she makes incredible soap, which we’re going to hear about very soon in the show.
But first, I want to ask Cynthia. You had mentioned before about the FDA and labeling and beauty bars versus soap. So what is the difference between if somebody sees the word ‘beauty bar’ on a bar of what they think is soap and real soap.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Beauty bars have usually had all the good ingredients siphoned out of it. That’s what we were just talking about.
DEBRA: So is there a legal definition of what the word ‘soap’ is? I know that in the government, in foods, there is standardization of like mayonnaise, for example. It can’t be called mayonnaise unless it has certain ingredients in it. So is it the same thing with soap?
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Yes, almost, yes. The FDA has books that are probably about five inches thick that are a very dry read.
DEBRA: Yes, I’ve read some of them.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Unfortunately. They’re quite specific as to what is termed as soap or a beauty bar. There are very few true soap makers left, by the way, in the United States. Out of all the millions of people, there’s only about 65 true soap makers left.
DEBRA: Wow!
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: So a lot of the things that you see at shows, markets, et ceter is either a beauty bar or a melt n’ pour product. The melt n’ pour is actually what I consider in my opinion one of the worst. That is the product you can actually go into Michael’s craft store and in children’s crafts and see a big block of white that you can take home that you melt, put a little color, a little glycerin in and pour it back out in a mold, cut it up and call it homemade soap, which a lot of people do.
Unfortunately, the glycerin that most people use comes from biodiesel fuel. That is a different type of glycerin. That is not the soap glycerin that you need for your skin. And there is no scent, there’s no color, there’s no [inaudible 00:16:14]. It’s really scary.
And I’m not sure how the FDA thinks that they’re going to crack down on everybody because to be quite honest, they can’t even get a handle on our food supply. So I think it’s a scare tactic I think because back in the ‘90s, melt and pour became very popular. It’s the clear stuff that you can see little bits and pieces in. It melts very quickly and it leaves slime all over your skin in the shower.
So everyone started jumping on the bandwagon and started doing melt n’ pour beauty bars and calling it handmade soap. I think since it’s become inundated, everywhere you go, to see someone set up with homemade soap. I think that’s why the FDA finally is clamping down or trying to clamp down.
DEBRA: Yeah. One of the things that has been such a difficult thing, but not just in soap, but in all kinds of products is that there’s a term like ‘soap’ and yet that can mean so many different things.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: I’m not sure if you realize this, but the FDA does not even recognize the word ‘natural’ when you’re talking about…
DEBRA: I know that. We’ve talked about that before, yeah.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: It’s like people use the word ‘vintage’ to describe clothing and furniture when ‘vintage’ is really a term used for wine. So it’s all relative I guess.
DEBRA: It would be nice if there were some standardized words that we could just say this word and know what it means and not have there be so much…
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Exactly! Oh, totally. I agree.
DEBRA: And even within the naming of chemicals, that’s where it gets really confusing because you can call something like glycerin (you just said glycerin) and glycerin can either be the natural glycerin that is the result of soap making or it can be, as you said, glycerin made from petrochemicals, from diesel fuel and it’s completely synthetic and has nothing to do with soap at all, yet all it says on the label is glycerin. And that’s something I’ve been writing about for years and years and years.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Exactly! Yeah, it’s really – [sigh], I guess people are going to use what they want to use to their benefit or not their benefit. And that’s what’s scary because you really can’t – you’re right, there’s no standardized wording that can really describe what you’re using.
DEBRA: And I think that people look at soap and say, “Oh, this looks so pretty with all that little stuff in it or it’s all these colors that are swirled together or it has a pretty fragrance or whatever. But then there’s this whole other issue of, “Is this soap actually functioning well to help your skin? Are there any toxic chemicals in it?” And it’s not just about how pretty it is.
That’s what we’re going to talk about when we come back from the break, which is coming up in about a minute or so. So let’s see what can we talk about in a minute.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Well, let me tell you what happened. When I finally started making soap, my daughter knew that I was starting to make soap. She called me one day and said, “Mom, you got to do something for Charlie. She’s scratching until she bleeds.” So my No More Eczema soap is actually the first soap that I ever made. And to this day, it’s probably one of my bestsellers.
DEBRA: So what about it makes people not have eczema?
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Just my recipe. It’s just my recipe. I don’t claim it cures eczema. That would put me in a whole different category with the FDA. I don’t claim anything, but I can say that it does help. It contains no scent, it contains no color. I crush up and grade organic field cut oatmeal or oats – that’s not oatmeal, but the oats – and that is placed aside for a little bit of exfoliation, a little bit of a calming effect. Everything I put in my soap, there’s a reason for it.
DEBRA: Yes, yes. And I’ve been looking at your ingredients list and these soaps don’t contain any parabens, sodium, lauryl sulfate, phosphates, harsh chemicals, mineral oils or petroleum products of any kind. I think you really bend over backwards to use this many organic ingredients as possible.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Oh! Oh, certainly. And even the palm that I use is sustainable. It’s expensive to buy organic and sustainable, but I wouldn’t use anything else.
DEBRA: Okay, we need to go to break now. When we come back, we’ll talk more about CJ’s soap and how real soap gets made. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Cynthia Young Jennings of Sweet Harvest Farms. She’s in Tampa, Florida and I found her at multiple craft stores and farmer’s markets and things. You can go to her website at SweetHarvestFarms.com to learn more about her soaps and makes a purchase and enjoy her creativeness in putting together her website. It’s got a lot of lovely things on it. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Cynthia A. Young Jennings. She’s the owner of Sweet Harvest Farms in Tampa, Florida. Her website is SweetHarvestFarms.com.
So Cynthia, CJ, you’ve got this great page on your website that I’ve read about five times now. When you go to her website, the first on the left side, it says ‘Shop’ and right away, the first thing you see is Handmade Soap 101. I’m looking at the Handmade Soap 101 page.
So the first thing – and this is the thing that actually, what I’m about to say is the thing that made me finally buy a bar of soap. It was because it says right on this page, “You cannot wrap true soap in cellophane or put them in a box. True soap needs air to continue to cure and every soap needs to be marked with a cure date on the back label.” That is the first time I have ever seen that.
And then when I was at Cynthia’s booth at the fair, I looked on the labels and they all had dates. Some of them were very fresh and you had to wait in order to use them until they got to their cure date. Tell us about curing soap. I just got this whole idea of it being like this thing that needs to breathe. It just changed my whole idea of soap. So tell us about this.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Well, the cold process method of soap, that process is called saponification. The saponification is the combination of the lye water, which sounds scary, but it’s not because once it’s mixed with the oil, it’s already eradicated.
That’s another thing that’s very important. You cannot have true soap without lye. You have to use lye in order to make soap. I actually use food-grade lye, the same type of lye that’s made to make pretzels. So it’s extra safe.
Well, that saponification process is very much like fermentation with wine. You wouldn’t drink the grape juice and the sugar as wine until it was completely fermented. And it’s the same thing with soap. It takes about 45 weeks from the day I make it for it to be totally soap. The lye and the oils are still doing their thing. And as it cures, it actually gets harder and harder because the moisture that’s in the soap starts to evaporate.
Let’s say that it says the cure date is the 22nd of January, so that is the day that you can start using it. If you let that bar set for about another month, instead of lasting six to eight weeks, which my soap do, it might last you about 12 and that’s because it becomes harder.
DEBRA: Wow! I will tell you this is a really hard – you know this, but listeners, this is a really hard bar of soap. It is not soft. It is hard and it is heavy every time I pick it up. It is not a frothy bar, it’s dense.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Right!
DEBRA: It’s like eating gelato instead of ice cream.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: That’s a good description. Although if you’ve been to my bar, it wouldn’t hurt you. It would just foam with the mouth a little bit.
DEBRA: I love that!
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Yes. And a lot of people, it’s really funny because I explain to the parents if the children are with them, let your children use this soap and they’re like, “Oh, it will melt” and I’m like, “No. You could have this in the shower in the water and heat it directly, it’s not going to melt like your beauty bars. It’s not going to melt like your melt n’ pour products. This is a true bar of soap that will last and last.”
I mean, I had people come up and say, “I have a little bitty piece” and they’re showing me their fingers really close. “I have a little bitty piece of soap and it still works.” So that’s the true difference. If it doesn’t leave a slim on the tub, it’s certainly not going to leave it on your skin.
DEBRA: No, it doesn’t leave any slime. And I think I paid $7 for this big bar. Isn’t that how much it costs, $7 or something.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Yes. And believe me, in all the years (I’ve been doing this now for 12 years), in all those years, I’ve only had one other true soap maker come up to me and introduce themselves and they said, “How are you making any money? You’re giving this away?”
DEBRA: Yeah, I was really surprised because I had bought a lot of handmade soap over the years, probably some of the stuff that really isn’t soap. It melts within like a month. If I can get it to last for a month, I’m lucky. And they charge $4 or $5 or $6 for that. I’m looking at this bar of soap and I think it’s going to last me – I mean, I’m just one person taking one shower a day. I think it’s going to last me three or four or five months anyway.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Yes, I have a lot of people that – unfortunately, my husband and I use the same soap. So it will last probably about six to eight weeks. But it’s really funny because we’ll be using a bar of soap and I’m like, “Okay, I want to go on to the next scent” and it’s like it’s still lasting and lasting and lasting.
DEBRA: Yeah, it does.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: But also, a lot of people have misconception because you want to use this soap on your face. People look at me like I’m nuts because of course, they would use this stuff that they get commercially because it does nothing but draw your skin. But you want to use this.
I have a lot of customers that tell me they see reduced fine lines around their eyes just using my soap. I can’t claim that because I would get in trouble. But I can tell you what my customers say. I do have a press and a testimonial page on my website that you can read and actually see the videos of my customers, a testing.
I am 60. That was a really hard age for me, by the way. I cried for days. But a lot of people – in fact, everyone I meet, when I tell them I’m 60, they actually ask for my license because I truly look probably about 45. That is because I use this soap on my face.
DEBRA: I’ve been using it on my face. Actually, I’ve never been one for going through all those beauty products that you’re supposed to use on your face. I’ve just never done that. I’ve always used soap. And I have very few wrinkles for my age. It actually feels really good to use your soap on my face because it does get clean, but it doesn’t feel dried out at all.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Right!
DEBRA: And I’m just very happy with it. I’m very happy with it.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: And every bar of soap, like I was saying, there’s a reason behind it. So I had all these people ask me, “Well, do you have soap for this? Do you do a soap for that?” And so I actually now have a dog soap for Phyto and people swear by it. I have a soap that I make for acne.
And one thing about that is there is what’s called salicylic acid that is what is used in a lot of acne remedies and prescriptions. I use all-natural – now, here we go with that word ‘natural’ because that’s what people want to hear. But it is! Salicylic acid actually comes from the willow tree. And what I do is I brew a tea of willow bark and put it into the soap to combat the acne and blemishes while still leaving your skin soft.
DEBRA: Well, of course, that’s the natural way to do it. We need to go to break, but we’ll be right back. My guest today is Cynthia A. Jennings – I think I left out one of your names here, Cynthia A. Young Jennings, owner of Sweet Harvest Farms. I was looking at your website instead of looking at my page about you. Cynthia A. Young Jennings, owner of Sweet Harvest Farms. Her website is SweetHarvestFarms.com. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Cynthia A. Young Jennings of Sweet Harvest Farms in Tampa, Florida. Her website is SweetHarvestFarms.com.
There’s a couple of things I want to make sure that we get in here before the end of the show, which is coming up very soon. You have here on this page ‘Homemade Soap 101’, it says “there are very few true soap makers left that stay true to the old-fashion method of soap making that is used literally thousands of years ago.” Tell us about the excavations in ancient Babylon.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Well, they have found, they’ve uncovered cylinders with inscriptions for soap making around 2800 B.C. and later records from Egypt as well and describing how the oils were combined with alkaline salts to make soap. A lot of the way that they found this was after they slaughtered a sheep or whatever to eat, of course, the oils from the body would then leech across the fire, which of course produces ash, then it hardened. I’m like, “How did people figure out that they can use them to wash themselves?” I don’t know.
DEBRA: I don’t know! Maybe somebody just picked up the hardened fat out of the fire.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: I think someone probably did. It may be have rained or got wet and then it lathered up and they’re like, “Hmmm…” I have that question about a lot of things, how people figure out things.
So it’s the combination of oils. Lye actually comes from ash. And so it’s the combination of that that makes true soap. Like I said earlier, you cannot have true soap without lye.
DEBRA: And before they started manufacturing lye that you could buy in a package, people made their soap by combining fat particularly from animals because it’s so easy to get…
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Right, and the ash.
DEBRA: …and the ash from their fires, their fireplaces.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Exactly!
DEBRA: That’s how like colonial times, for example, people made soap.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Right! And it was back then it was called ‘lye soap’.
DEBRA: Yeah, it’s quite an ancient and natural thing and just something that our bodies have evolved with over time.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: It is.
DEBRA: So I love soap. I just love soap. Anyway, the other thing I wanted to make sure we mention is that about people with allergies because I know that a lot of my listeners are sensitive to certain things. So would you tell us about allergies?
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Well, let me explain something. A lot of people that come up to me and say, “Oh, you know, I can’t use because it smells or whatever and I’m allergic to scent.” I’m like, “No.” More than likely, you’re not allergic to the scent. You’re allergic to the chemicals that are put into the scent.
DEBRA: Right!
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: And so a lot of people will use my soap and they’re shocked because they’ve never been able to use anything like this on their skin before because they were allergic or they would break out or they would itch or whatever. And they don’t find that with my soap.
Now, I will tell you, I did give a bar of my soap to one of the vendors that sold flowers across from me one day. The next week, I saw him and I said, “So how did it work?” and he goes, “It was amazing!” He said, “But I broke out.” I was like, “What?” It’s like, “No way it was my soap.” He goes, “Yeah, it was your soap.”
Well, I come to find out, you can be allergic to nuts. There is a rare condition where you can be so ultra-sensitive that a lot of these people don’t live past the age of 30. That’s how sensitive they are because almost everything has some kind of nut oil in it. It turned out that because I use shea butter in my soap and shea butter comes from the shea nut.
So he was one of the few. So now, on my bar on the back, it says, ‘Shea butter’ and in parenthesis, it says ‘shea nut’ because a lot of people don’t realize that the ‘shea butter’ comes from the ‘shea nut’. But I have people like my son-in-law who is extremely allergic to peanuts and such and he can use my soap no problem. So I have a lot of people that use allergies to nuts that use my soap without a problem in the world because of the shea butter, but it’s just that one in all the thousands of people that I sold to that had that ultra, ultra sensitivity.
And to this day, I’m still not really sure that it was my soap. He could’ve eaten something at dinner that had traces because you can have my new traces of nut oil and other oil, but you have to be really, really careful.
So there really isn’t an allergy or sensitivity to the scent that is in the soap. Like I said, I had people that had been using my soap for years and they can’t even use the soap the doctor prescribe them from the pharmacy, but they can use my soap. That makes me feel really good.
Whenever I get really tired (because it is a very laborious process and I’ve been doing this every day for 12 years), when I get tired, my husband sits me down at my computer and he pulls up the testimonial page. He goes, “If you want to know why you do this, read what your customers have to say.” When a simple bar of soap can make such a difference in someone’s life, I can’t describe to you the feeling that gives me and the joy.
DEBRA: Hmmm… I can imagine. So the point I wanted to make here is that it says here (I want to get the right one), “If you find that any of the ingredients used in our products may cause you irritation due to allergies, it’s always possible for us to produce a soap that does not contain any specific oil. Just email your request and we can make you a soap that is just as moisturizing and luxurious to suit your needs.”
And so I just want to make sure that people who are having difficulty finding a soap that they can use because of allergies that they can come to you and you’ll work with them to get them a wonderful bar of soap, something that they can use. I think that’s really important.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: And what I do too, because like I said, 99.9999% of the time, people that feel that they are sensitive a bath and body product, most of the time, it’s the chemicals and preservatives in the product that they’re having a reaction to and not any of the really good stuff that you’ll find in my soap. So what I’ll do is I’ll actually send a sample if they do have allergies of any sort. I have yet to have anyone come back.
I mean, usually, when I send a sample to someone that says, “Well, I want to try it.” Within probably two weeks, they’re ordering seven bars. That tells me that it worked just fine.
DEBRA: Well, I would order seven bars, but I think it would last me seven years.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: And just to put a bug in your ears too, I had finally – now, I’ve been doing this, my family and I had been using this for years. But finally, after the FDA did come out a couple of months back and say that yes, toothpaste is actually dangerous for you, I am now going to be offering my all-natural tooth powder.
DEBRA: I saw that on your card, but I don’t see it on your website because I want some.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Yes. Finally, I did the first – well, I call it ‘test marketing’ at High Park Market on Sunday and it was a hit, which I was very pleased to see because a lot of people, they really don’t pay attention to the news and stuff like that. It was out there for a very short time. It was out for maybe two or three days and then it was gone. A lot of people did hear about it and they’re like, “Yeah, we heard. We can’t believe it! Flouride is awful for you. There’s no benefit whatsoever.”
All you have to do is turn your toothpaste over, look at the ingredients, google each ingredient and read what it says about the ingredients.
DEBRA: Yeah. We’ve talked about toothpaste before on this show and I’ve been writing about it for years.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Oh, good.
DEBRA: So I’m very excited to see what you’ve come up with since I love your stuff so much.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Well, it should be on the website by next week.
DEBRA: Okay, good because I just ran out of my tooth powders.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Oh, no!
DEBRA: I was wondering what to try next. So we only have about a minute left. Is there anything you’d like to say that you haven’t said?
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: I would just encourage people to read, read, read. Don’t just go to one source, go to many. I would not put anything, ingest anything or put anything on my skin if I did not know what the ingredients were. What I tell everybody is if you can’t pronounce it, don’t use it because a lot of the…
DEBRA: Totally!
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: I mean, it just makes sense. You were granted this amazing, beautiful life and this amazing functioning body that’s a miracle in itself, take care of it. And take care of the earth that we live in. We keep taking and we keep forgetting to put back and that’s important.
DEBRA: Yes, it is. I totally agree with that too. So let me give your website again. It’s SweetHarvestFarms.com. When you go there, listeners, she’s got so many different kinds of soaps – handmade soaps, specialty soaps, seasonal soap, shea butter bars, African black soap, pine tar soap, cedar soap dishes that are beautiful made out of untreated white cedar and she’s got men’s shaving soap. Do you also sell all the little brushes and everything that goes with it?
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Yes, I do. they’re actual badger brushes that I sold that you can buy either with the men’s shaving kit or without.
DEBRA: And we’ve got to go. Thank you so much for being with us.
CYNTHIA A. YOUNG JENNINGS: Thank you.
DEBRA: I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com to find out more. Have a great day. Be well!
Ecos Paints
Question from Parn
Hi Debra,
Do you have any experience with Ecos Paints?
I narrow down to two paints that I may get, Natura and Ecos. Do you like one better than the other?
I know that Natura had some problem in the past.
Is there any other paint that you like beside this two?
I tried Mythic years ago. I liked it fine. I read that some people had problem with linger smell recently.
Thank you.
Parn
Debra’s Answer
I haven’t used Ecos Paint to paint an entire room, but I have some samples and I was very impressed with them.
I did an interview with Julian Crawford, CEO of the US distributor of Ecos Paints and like what he had to say. You can listen to the interview and decide for yourself. Next time I paint, I’m going to try Ecos.
The other paint I would recommend to you is Old Fashioned Milk Paint. It’s made from only natural ingredients and simply smells like a glass of warm milk. I have painted a whole room with this paint and it’s beautiful.
The Best Diet for Perfect Health
My guest today is Paul Jaminet, Ph.D., author of Perfect Health Diet: Regain Health and Lose Weight be Eating the Way You Were Meant to Eat (Scribner, 2012), editor-in-chief of the Journal of Evolution and Health, and blogger. He is also the creator of the Perfect Health Retreat, an opportunity to repair health and obtain a comprehensive education in the Perfect Health diet and lifestyle at a luxurious beachfront setting. These retreats are establishing the Perfect Health Diet as a spectacularly successful – and delicious – approach to health improvement. Paul became convinced of the importance of an ancestral approach to health when he overcame a chronic disease through diet and lifestyle. Prior to his discovery of ancestral health, Paul had been an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a software entrepreneur. Paul continues to pursue research in economics and business strategy. www.perfecthealthdiet.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
The Best Diet for Perfect Health
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Paul Jaminet Ph.D.
Date of Broadcast: January 06, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free. Happy New Year! This is our first show of 2015. I’ve been off for a few weeks. I always take a little break over the winter. The quiet season of the year to rest and rejuvenate and make new plans for the following years. I have lots of plans for this year and I think you’ll be very happy with them.
[Coughing] Excuse me. I was just eating while I was listening to the news.
So my guest today is Paul – I’m hoping I’m saying this right and I’m sure he’ll tell us after he comes on – Paul Jaminet, Ph.D. He’s the author of the The Perfect Health Diet: Regain Health and Lose Weight by Eating the Way You Were Meant to Eat. Well, on the cover of his book at the very top, it says, “Paleo perfected!” It’s the quote from Vogue Magazine.
And as I’m looking through his diet, I haven’t tried it yet, but it’s very interesting to me because as some of you know if you’ve been listening or reading my website, I did the Paleo diet about a year ago, but it wasn’t quite right for me. And so I’m hoping today – well, I’m sure today that Paul will tell us about more scientific evidence of what we should be eating and why.
And this is very scientific in fact. This is not just a fad, what he’s talking about. He’s done the scientific research and has put together a whole program. He calls it an ancestral approach and this goes back to eating the foods that our bodies are really designed to eat.
So without further adieu, let’s just bring on Paul and he’ll tell us all about it. Hi, Paul!
PAUL JAMINET: Hi, Debra. It’s great to be with you.
DEBRA: Thank you. And how do you say your name?
PAUL JAMINET: Oh, you pronounced it perfectly, Paul Jaminet.
DEBRA: Thank you. Okay, I was guessing. Anyway, tell us how did you become interested in this diet? What prompted you to do this research and put this together?
PAUL JAMINET: Well, like a lot of people in middle age, I started having some health problems. And in my case, I have had some health problems actually since birth. I was in and out of the hospital with chronic ear infection as a young child. Those infections actually kind of persisted, but they became very severe after I had a long course of antibiotics for acne and [inaudible 00:03:38]. And after that, I just started going downhill every year. I started really getting worried for my health. I felt like I was getting Alzheimer’s in my thirties and forties.
So at one point, about ten years ago, I found the Paleo diet and that was the first thing I tried that made a difference in my symptoms. It’s like, “Oh, this proves diet is really important and I should investigate this and figure out how to become healthy.”
So that started a long course of research. I had some problems on Paleo. You mentioned in the introduction that you might have had some problems too. I knew it was an imperfect diet (at least the way I was implementing it), but it’s been promising enough that it could be a starting point for figuring out how to make it better.
DEBRA: That was my conclusion too, yeah. So I’m really interested in what you have to say. I’ve been kind of tweaking my Paleo diet without having done the research that you’ve done, so I’m really interested in what you’re going to tell us.
PAUL JAMINET: Yeah. Well, what I found was after I adopted the Paleo diet, some symptoms improved, but then I started developing clear signs of nutritional deficiencies. I found I needed more carbohydrates than I’d originally implemented the diet with. I also found I developed a vitamin C deficiency and I had symptoms of scurvy. I would have little scratch wounds that wouldn’t heal for six months. When I took vitamin C’s, they finally healed.
So I realized that the diet as I was eating it was missing some nutrition. That gave me the idea, “I’ll just research all the nutrients, all the known nutrients and figure out how much we need, find the foods that deliver those nutrients and then I’ll construct a natural whole foods diet.” That’s why we call it ‘ancestral’. We eat the kinds of foods that our ancestors could’ve eaten before they had a lot of modern technology and chemistry and food science.
So it’s like a hunter/gatherer diet, natural plants and animal, but we’re tweaking the proportions so that we optimize nutrition. We’re including some very nutrient-dense food like egg yolks or liver or bones fat or soup. It took us seven years of research to really get our diet right. But then we found, my wife and I both cured our chronic health problems. When we started a blog and published our book, we’ve had several thousand readers report that their health problems cleared up on our diet.
And so, that really proved to us that it really works. And in fact, when we wrote the book, we knew that it would work for others because it just made so much sense that if you nourish your body properly, then that will greatly improve your body’s ability to deal with almost any health challenge.
DEBRA: I completely agree with that statement. And as I’ve said many times, a large part of our health problems is because we – well, first of all, because we’re exposed to toxic chemicals. But also, because we’re exposed to toxic chemicals, we need more nutrition for our bodies to deal with that. And instead of getting more nutrition, we’re getting less nutrition by eating processed foods.
I’ve done a lot of research on Paleo because I was eating a Paleo diet and I thought that it made sense to go back to our original foods. And for a long time – oh, I can’t even tell you how many years – years ago, I had this idea – I know! In 1987, I got to a point where I said, “Well, I just need to look at nature and what does nature do. Let’s just use nature as the model.” And the first thing was that instead of eating industrial processed foods, to just eat foods that would be in my natural environment locally and seasonally. So that doesn’t take us back in time, but at least it takes us back to nature.
And so I illuminated a lot of these things a long time ago. But the thing that’s missing when I look at a lot of Paleo websites is that they give you lists of foods, but they don’t tell you as you are talking about the proportions. And so people, they look and they say, “Well, I can have chocolate on the Paleo diet” and so they eat a lot of chocolate instead of a lot of nutritious foods or they eat bacon for every meal or they just pick something and they eat their favorite foods off the list instead of considering what the nutritional aspects, so I’m really interested in hearing this.
So we have just a couple of minutes before break and I want to make sure that you have plenty of time to start explaining this. So let me just introduce. If you go to Paul’s website (because this is what we’re going to start talking about after the break), if you go to Paul’s website, which is PerfectHealthDiet.com, there’s a link there in the menu, it’s called ‘The Diet’ (it’s the second link), it has a wonderful diagram that you could just print out and put on your refrigerator door – oh, there’s chocolate right at the top!
PAUL JAMINET: We’re actually one of those that approve of chocolate – at least 85%, not too sugary chocolate.
DEBRA: Yeah. Well, anyway, there’s a beautiful drawing that shows the proportions of how to eat different groups of food and a very nice list of what to eat and what not to eat. We’re going to be discussing that when we come back after the break.
Let me just prepare you how I prepare my chocolate because I don’t eat chocolate bars with any kind of sugar in it. I started a number of years ago trying to figure out the perfect way to eat chocolate and I’ve gone through many evolutions. What I do now is I have organic cocoa powder and I mix it with date sugar. And then I put in coconut butter. For those of you who don’t know, that’s the whole coconut meat ground up like peanut butter or a nut butter, so it includes the fiber and oil. And then I mix it with grass-fed cream. It’s very delicious and very nutritious.
We do need to go to break now. And when we come back, Paul is going to tell us about his Perfect Health Diet. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Paul Jaminet, Ph.D., author of the Perfect Health Diet. And now, we’re going to hear all about the diet. I actually love the way this diet looks.
So why don’t you tell us about the diet first and then I’ll ask my questions?
PAUL JAMINET: Okay! Well, like I said, we’re an ancestral diet, a natural whole food diet. And probably the best way to understand our diet in a moment is we sometimes call it an example of ‘ancestral gourmet cuisine’ because it very closely resembles the proportions and the flavors that you would find in the very highest end restaurant like classic French restaurant or a very high-end Chinese or Thai restaurant. Those are pretty much the proportions of the food. It’s very delicious. It’s very satisfying.
We really didn’t expect that when we were developing the diet. We developed them just to be as nutritious and as optimal for health as we could. But then we realize after we were done and it resembled gourmet cuisine that that really makes sense because our brains must have evolved a liking for healthful food to try to encourage us to get the nutrition that we need. So it’s a very delicious diet. It resembles food from expensive restaurants, but it’s actually very easy to prepare at home.
The graphic design that you mentioned on our website on ‘The Diet’ page is in the shape of a yin-yang apple. So the apple represents health…
DEBRA: Yes, I noticed that, yeah.
PAUL JAMINET: Yeah. And the yin-yang symbol represents balance. So that’s partly a balance between plant and animal foods. The Paleo community tended to deprecate plant foods and discouraged eating carbohydrate and we want to emphasize you need both, plant and animal foods for best health.
It also represents balance between east and west. My wife is of Chinese descent. There are elements of Chinese and American, European cuisine. There are many different ways to implement the Perfect Health Diet. You can do it both ways, but it’s actually good to implement some of each.
So for instance, we recommend flavoring foods with fats and oil, with some of the classic cooking accents like lyme juice, vinegar and with Umami flavors like grated eggs cheese, like tamari sauce, like fish sauce. You can sample from a lot of the world’s cuisine and Umami flavors are much more popular in Asia than in America, but they’re good for you.
So when you put everything together, our diet ends up being about three-quarters plant food, one quarter animal food. But most of the calories come from the animals. So a lot of plant foods are very low in calories. It’s a very fiber-rich diet.
For instance, we recommend eating about a pound of starches a day, things like potatoes or white rice. We recommend cooking them and then refrigerating them for a day, which increase the amount of fiber and makes them more healthful.
DEBRA: Ah! I didn’t know that. Wow! Say that again, say that again. The starches, you cook them in advance and then refrigerate?
PAUL JAMINET: Right! So we’ll cook enough starches for maybe three days, the next three days. We’ll cook them in the evening after we’re done eating usually. And then put them in the refrigerator. We usually cook them in a pressure cooker and then refrigerate them. And then we’ll just pull them out as we need them for meals for the next several days.
As you cook the starches and then refrigerate them, the cooking largely eliminates the fiber, but then when you refrigerate them, the starch re-gelatinizes into a form that’s difficult for us to digest, but is very beneficial to gut bacteria.
There’s a lot of evidence that eating starches that you cooked and then refrigerated that way is very beneficial to the health or the gut microbiom.
Our diet is also rich in fruits and vegetables, which are good for the gut microbiom. The standard cooking assets like lemon juice, lime juice and vinegar, those are good for the gut microbiom. A lot of the classic spices that are used for cooking are good for the gut microbiom. Even drinks like coffee, tea and cocoa like you mentioned are good for the gut. They have polyphenols and other compounds that are beneficial for our gut microbiom.
So there’s a lot of – you know, one thing that distinguishes us from the Paleo diet or other forms of ancestral diet is that there are many, many factors in food which informs our health. We try to optimize everything. That’s why we chose the name ‘Perfect Health Diet’. We’re really looking at hundreds of factors that influence health like all the known nutrients and like the nutrients not only for us, but for our gut microbes and trying to get the proportions exactly right.
We also emphasize lifestyle elements like [inaudible 00:19:56]. That also, in turns out, influences health.
We work hard to make everything practical to live. So my wife and I are working on a cookbook right now with practical advice. We’ve learned how to implement this ourselves in 30 minutes a day (or less) work.
DEBRA: Great!
PAUL JAMINET: We can cook very efficiently. We cook once a day for thirty minutes and we make enough food for three meals.
One nice thing is on our diet, you can very easily repackage leftovers to make a nutritious meals that taste quite different from the meal you originally cooked, but is still very satisfying and healthful.
So there’s a lot of good science to our diet. Now, when we go out to restaurants, it’s very difficult to find a restaurant that can serve a meal as good as our own meal, the home cooked meals we have every night.
DEBRA: I find that true for me too, yeah. We need to go to break again, but we’ll talk about the diet when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Paul Jaminet. He’s the author of the Perfect Health Diet. Go on over to his website, PerfectHealthDiet.com. At the top, on the menu, there’s a tab that says ‘The Diet’ and there you’ll find this diagram that we’ve been talking about and it lists all the proportions and everything you can eat on this diet. We’ll be talking about it more when we come back. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Paul Jaminet who’s the author of the book, Perfect Health Diet: How to Regain Health and Lose Weight by Eating the Way You Were Meant to Eat. We’ve been talking about the diet as outlined on his website at PerfectHealthDiet.com. He’s got a great picture. If you just go to the page that says ‘The Diet’, he’s got a diagram in the form of a yin-yang apple that shows the balance of the foods. It’s a great reminder. You can just print it out and put it on your refrigerator and it will remind you what to eat.
Okay! So now, I’m going to ask you my questions. I know that for me, the problem I had with the Paleo Diet was that it was too much protein and vegetables, that actually, if I eat too much protein, I end up having gout attacks. I ended up after a few months on the Paleo diet having two months of gout. I had three gout attacks back to back. I thought, “This is not going to work for me.”
But I also found that for me, I wanted to eat more carbohydrates, yes and I need a little bit of fruit. And what I added back in was legumes, which is on your ‘do not eat’ list. And the reason that I added them – but what I want to eat is sweet potatoes. I want to eat sweet potatoes and I want to eat potatoes. I don’t because of blood sugar.
And so how could somebody who is – like I’ve been on a low carb diet for years because of blood sugar. And so I have all this big, “Don’t eat these starches.” So what would you say to somebody like me?
PAUL JAMINET: Okay! Well, yeah, all of those are very common issues. And so the reason you got gout on a high protein diet is that when you’re burning proteins for energy (which isn’t really a good thing to do), you’re releasing all these nitrogen. That gets processed in the liver, the urea, which makes your urine smell – you know that classic urine smell. But if the liver can’t make enough urea, then it makes uric acid, which gives you gout or kidney stones or gallstones or things like that.
And so you definitely don’t want to overeat protein. We recommend getting about 15% of calories from protein and that’s about what most people normally do. So for most people, they want to increase their meat consumption relative to their normal diet.
And then the other issues, the blood sugar, well, there are two aspects to that. One is the post-meal blood sugar and the other one is the fasting blood glucose. If you’re prediabtic or diabetic, then you’ll get elevated fasting glucose. And for both of those, it can actually be beneficial to eat some starches.
That helps in several ways. One is the resistance starch really helps your gut microbiom and the things that the gut microbes make for you help improve your metabolic function and help you to handle or control your blood glucose better. So being [inaudible 00:30:31] in resistant starch fiber.
Now, they also have some compounds that are toxic for your digestive tract function. And if you soak them and then cook them for a long time, then you’ll destroy those and there will be a healthful food.
DEBRA: Yeah, that’s what I thought.
PAUL JAMINET: So that’s fine. If you’re willing to take the time to prepare them properly, then you can include beans in your diet. But it’s not really necessary for health and if you have less time, then it’s perfectly fine to do what potatoes, white rice, sweet potatoes. The key is (like I said before the break) just cook them in advance and then refrigerate them. And then you’ll get a similar amount of fiber as what the beans have. So you’ll get the same benefits that the beans do.
DEBRA: So let me ask you a question before I forget. So then after you refrigerate the rice or the potatoes, can you then warm them back up again.
PAUL JAMINET: Yeah, warm them say on a microwave.
DEBRA: I don’t use a microwave.
PAUL JAMINET: So long as we cook them, don’t put them in boiling water, you can make them comfortable to eat.
DEBRA: Okay! So I don’t use a microwave, but I could just like steam them a little bit or sautee them or something?
PAUL JAMINET: Yeah, something to warm them up a little and make them at an enjoyable temperature to eat.
DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. But you could eat something like one of my favorite things, potato salad. That would be a cold potato. That would be really good. That would have a lot of fiber in it.
PAUL JAMINET: Yeah, exactly.
DEBRA: Yeah! So then I also wanted to ask you why white rice instead of brown rice?
PAUL JAMINET: Well, the general problem with the cereal grains and legumes is that they’re all grassland, above ground seeds. They were always getting eaten by herbivores, so things like cows and horses and so on. And so they evolve these poisons that suppress mammalian digestion. And in cereal grains, those are mostly on the bran. We don’t want to eat too many of those. That’s why we eat the [inaudible 00:33:00], the cereal grains and the beans unless you can prepare them in a way that eliminates the toxin.
In white rice, it turns out, first of all, most of those toxins are in the bran. So when they melt the brown off the white rice, they’re eliminating most of them. And then the rest are destroyed in cooking. So white rice is basically a toxin-free choice of starch. It’s similar to potatoes and the other in-ground starches, which are helpful with normal cooking. They don’t need any special operation.
So that’s the reason we recommend white rice. There is a little bit of nutrition on the bran, but actually, there are many other sources you can get those nutrients form. So there really isn’t much benefit to eating the bran. The bran in other cereal grains is the major source of gluten, which gives some people health problems.
Yeah, so different people would react with different intensity to some of the compounds in the bran of the cereal grains. But it can be really hard to tell if you’re sensitive. You can have low level inflammation and not really notice. But it could be taking the uric [inaudible 00:34:37] or giving you a higher chance of developing cancer. So we sort of take the safe approach. It’s better to not eat those things in quantity.
DEBRA: Right, right. We need to go to break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Paul Jaminet. You can go to his website, PerfectHealthDiet.com where he has all outlined for you very nicely and even some recipes, which we’re going to talk about when we come back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Paul Jaminet. He’s the author of the The Perfect Health Diet: Regain Health and Lose Weight by Eating the Way You Were Meant to Eat.
Let’s see, what did I want to ask you about – recipes, recipes. Oh, I know what I want to ask you first. What are you eating today, breakfast and dinner?
PAUL JAMINET: Well, I do intermittent fasting. So I generally just don’t eat until maybe 1 p.m. or so. So I haven’t eaten yet apart from…
DEBRA: Ooh, what did you eat yesterday? What did you eat yesterday?
PAUL JAMINET: I had black coffee in the morning. And then for lunch I have leftovers. I basically re-arrange whatever leftovers we have in the refrigerator and I make [inaudible 00:39:50].
DEBRA: And what is that?
PAUL JAMINET: Well, that’s a classic Korean dish that means ‘leftover’. And also, what I do is I put a starch, usually potatoes or white rice. I put in some vegetable. I put in a sweet blend. Sometimes, it’s fruit. Yesterday, it was beet. I put in three egg yolks, which is one of our recommended nutrient-dense foods that we eat regularly. I put in a little bit of leftover beef stew that we had. So that included some tendons as well as meat and a bunch of vegetables like carrots and so on.
I put in a little bit of fish sauce, a little bit of rice vinegar. Those are the Umami and asset flavoring that we recommend. Just a touch of coconut meal. I warmed it up in the microwave.
DEBRA: It sounds delicious, but what did you have for dinner?
PAUL JAMINET: For dinner, I think we made Pad Thai last night. We also have some leftovers. We’ll actually snack on some cheese and rice crackers when my wife gets home from work and while we’re preparing dinner.
So it’s good to try to do most of your eating in the afternoon. So we do a lot of our cooking in the evening when she gets home, but we actually only kind of sample it and have a light dinner. Most of what we make, we eat as leftovers the next day or the next several days.
DEBRA: Yeah, I do that too. When I make things – I have more time to cook on the weekends than I do during the week. And one of the tricks that I found is very helpful to me staying on eating healthful food is to have enough food already prepared that I can just take out of the refrigerator and eat or warm up quickly. I have a little toaster oven that warms it up in three minutes.
And then I don’t have to think about, “Well, now what am I going to eat?” and go get even takeout from te natural food store (it has things in it that I don’t want to eat.” Having the food on-hand, knowing what it is that you’re going to eat, preparing it in advance and then having it there at a meal time, so no matter how busy you are, if you have time for a snack in the afternoon, that you have food there. It’s the no. 1 thing that I think helps people stay on an eating plan, whatever it is. And so I’m a big fan of leftovers.
PAUL JAMINET: Yeah. It’s no fun to cook if you’re really hungry and you tend to not make cheese in time and not make as good food as you should. It’s much better if you can enjoy some cheese and crackers and wine while you’re cooking.
My wife takes two lunches to work. She has her first lunch at about noon and her second lunch at about four. So she’s had most of her food, she’s not that hungry when she gets home. We can have a little extra cheese and crackers and just snack and sample on the first we cook dinner when it’s fun. And then, put it away for leftovers for tomorrow.
DEBRA: You know, one of the things that’s been really a challenge for me is not having starches, to not eat rice for so many years because I was on a low carb diet. It has just been extremely difficult to be able to do a lot of things like crackers, for example. I would love to have cheese and cracker. And so to add rice back into my diet and see how that goes, that would give me rice crackers, rice flour, rice noodles, just all these things that you can make with rice.
So I’m going to try this and see what happens.
PAUL JAMINET: Great! That’s good.
DEBRA: Yeah, because it seems to me that it overall makes sense and that instead of looking at individual symptoms, that if I would just try the diet as an overall good diet, that some of the symptoms might just handle on their own.
PAUL JAMINET: Yeah. Yeah.
DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. So is there a particular reason to use egg yolks only and not eat the egg whites or you’re just trying to get it dense?
PAUL JAMINET: Well, all the nutrition is in the yolk. The whites are basically pure protein. If you get your protein from meat or fish, which is what we recommend, then you’ll get a lot of micronutrients with the protein. You don’t really want to eat protein powders or pure protein, things like egg white. You want to get your protein with lots of other nutritious food compound.
And the other aspect with eggs is that it’s possible to develop a sensitivity to egg. We don’t want that to happen because egg yolks are so nutritious and so good for you. It turns out, the allergenic and immunogenic protein, most of them, 80% to 90% are in the white, not the yolks. So if you discard the white, you get rid of the 80% to 90% of the potential immunogens right there.
And then if you mix the egg yolks with food and cook them a little, then the proteins that are in the yolk becomes much more indigestible. So even if you have a sensitivity, you can reduce your reaction by about 99% just by simply discarding the white, mixing the yolk with food and cooking them. You’ll also greatly decreases the risk that you’ll ever develop egg sensitivity.
So that’s basically the reason you discard the white. You don’t need to. If you like whole eggs, you can eat whole eggs. But your risk of developing a sensitivity goes up.
DEBRA: Interesting. I look at what is commonly promoted as being healthy. And so somebody who were eating egg white omelets and bran, according to your viewpoint, that would exactly the wrong thing to eat.
PAUL JAMINET: Yeah, that’s right. I think there has been a lot of misinformation and a lot of randomness in how people eat and what they think is good. It’s kind of remarkable because if you went back a hundred years, there wasn’t the same confusion about how to eat. But now, we have many more choices and it’s much easier to go astray.
DEBRA: The other night, I was eating crackers made from rice flour and almonds with butter on top. And it was just like exactly the thing that I wanted to eat, but I was thinking, “Oh, rice! I shouldn’t be eating it, but this is what my body wants to eat” and I was doing exactly the right thing.
PAUL JAMINET: Yeah. Well, you should trust your body, trust its desire. It has your best interest at heart.
DEBRA: Yeah, as long as you are trusting…
PAUL JAMINET: As long as you’re eating natural whole food.
DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. I was going to say as long as you’re really trusting your body and not you’re having cravings of what you think you want to eat. You’re probably not craving – I was going to say chocolate cake, but chocolate’s okay. It’s just the cake part. You don’t want to eat wheat and things like that.
But I think there’s such a thing called instinctive nutrition where your body wants certain things and then you’ll want them just because you’re missing out on those nutrients or whatever. So it is good to do that.
We only have about a minute and a half left. So I just want to make sure that if there’s anything that you haven’t said, that I give you a little time to just kind of wrap up.
PAUL JAMINET: Okay. You know, I’d love to tell your listeners a little bit about our health retreat. My wife and I, I mentioned we’ve had several thousand reader success stories, people who cured their health problems on our diet. We wanted to figure out a way to prove scientifically.
No one in the same Perfect community gives much credence to anecdotes because you hear about the good stories, but you don’t certainly hear about people who had a bad time on the diet and gave it up. So you really want to have something that’s more like you see everything that happens, both the good and the bad if there’s any bad.
We were convinced that our diet would really help a lot of people and cure a lot of diseases and we decided to start a health retreat business where people could come for a week and we provide all the food, we provide the environment, we provide the exercise program. We teach every aspect of how to be healthy.
DEBRA: I need to interrupt just because we’re coming up very close to the end of the show. So people can find out more if they go to your website, PerfectHealthDiet.com. Thank you so much for being with me. It’s very interesting and I’m going to give your diet a try. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and I’ll be back tomorrow. Be well.
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