Episode 236: Relationship Between Hormones, Gut Health, and Mold (Kinda) w/ Raewyn Guerrero, FDN-P

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HORIZONTAL HEADSHOT, RAEWYN GUERRERO, A RELATIONSHIP, HORMONES, GUT HEALTH, MOLD, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

Introduction

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: What is going on, my friends? Welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show about a powerful relationship in our bodies.

We are actually privileged to be able to talk to Reed Davis’s partner in crime today, Raewyn Guerrero. Raewyn has been in the functional medicine space for almost eight, nine years at this point, then recently graduated FDN. I wanted to bring her back on the podcast. Now, when I say back on, even if you’ve been listening for a while, you might be like, when was she on before? I don’t remember that name. She was in Episode 30.

Yeah, it’s two years later and we’re just ever so slightly bigger than we were back in those humble beginnings. So, we thought we’d have her back on to talk about something a little different this time. In that first episode, she shared her story. I’m going to guess she was kind of new to podcasting and I wasn’t as experienced back then. I’ll put that in the show notes for you guys. Again, that’s her story.

A RELATIONSHIP, HORMONE HEALTH, WOMEN, GUT HEALTH, MOLD TOXICITY, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

Today we’re supposed to be talking about hormone health for women and how it relates to gut health and mold toxicity. I say supposed to talk about that because that is not necessarily where the conversation ended up. We did have bits and pieces of that, it’s in there somewhere. There are some great little side tangents that I think you guys will really love. Stick with us. I think you guys will enjoy this for the high energy. We will get the episode going in just a second here.

FDN’s Health Space Unmasked – Dr. Terry Wahls

But if you’re listening to this at the time of it coming out, or maybe the day after, you still do have a day or two then to get registered for our May Health Space Unmasked event. And that is with none other than Dr. Terry Wahls.

FDN'S HEALTH SPACE UNMASKED, DR. TERRY WAHLS, FREE, LIVE, Q&A, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

If you somehow do not know who she is, I would recommend that you open up your preferred search engine and just search for Dr. Terry Wahls. Then realize we have the privilege of getting her on with us for free, at least for you guys it’s free, for a couple of hours with a Live Q&A. She is going to be talking about so much cool stuff.

I know autoimmunity is going to be in there cause that’s pretty much par for the course anytime you get to talk to Dr. Terry Wahls. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I can even steal her for the podcast. But we’ll see if she goes for that. I will try. I’m hoping it goes well.

With that said, if you want to get involved with that, go to our show notes or just type in the URL, fdntraining.com/unmasked.

A Relationship: Tipping the Scale

Without further ado, let’s get to today’s episode.

All right. Hello there, Raewyn. Welcome back, technically, to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?

[00:02:52] Raewyn Guerrero: I’m doing great. It’s Friday and I’m just so excited about being back on this. It’s been two years since I’ve been here.

[00:02:58] Detective Ev: Yeah. Well, I said “back” almost hesitantly because technically before it was the FDNthrive Podcast, and we’ve since obviously moved to this. It’s cool because I appreciate all the people that came on back then and now, we have some legitimate listenership.

You actually saw results in your own business back then. You actually had someone that resonated and there were some clients from that. But it’s fun now getting to talk to a larger audience and just impacting people in a different way. We’ll have some fun today with this.

One thing I didn’t tell you before recording is if you see that little blur in the video, don’t worry. It’s all good. It’ll come out fine.

But Raewyn, for those that maybe have not listened to all 230 episodes now, I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to do that, but just in case you had something better to do with your life, can we go just briefly into your background of how you got into this space? Because it wasn’t by accident, you’re just like everyone else where you struggled with some stuff yourself.

A RELATIONSHIP, NEVER ONE THING, MULTIFACTORAL, MULTICAUSAL, TIPS THE SCALE, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

[00:03:45] Raewyn Guerrero: Yeah. You know, Evan, this is such a long-winded story, so I’m going to do my best to condense it. Because there’s never one thing, but there is one thing that tips the scale, right?

A Relationship: IBS

There are several things that led to this moment, but the big thing for me was anxiety and IBS back in 2011 and being dismissed by my gastroenterologist with, oh, this must all be in your head. Go see a psychiatrist. That’s what literally put me on the path to trying to figure out what was going on.

Why would I be imagining all this stuff going on with my stomach? You know, it’s just not true. I was so fixated at that time on the mind-body connection, I didn’t really understand this relationship between the body and the mind, that they communicated with each other, and that what’s going on when your gastrointestinal tract can actually have a very direct impact on your hormones, on your energy levels, on your immunity, on your metabolism, on pretty much everything, your skin. Honestly, I was dealing with all those things.

A RELATIONSHIP, HORMONES, GUT HEALTH, MOLD, TIPPING POINT, IBS, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

I had chronic migraines, awful periods. Literally you couldn’t touch me 10 days before my period because I’d be so swollen and inflamed and just in pain. Then of course compounding all of that with IBS was just not a lot of fun. But up until that point the IBS was really the tipping point.

I didn’t realize that I wasn’t supposed to be living every month in pain like that, I did not know that. Actually, I was just told by my family, my mother and my aunts, it’s just part of being a woman, suck it up. And not realizing, living on 1600 milligrams of Motrin for five days of the month is not actually good for you. So, you wonder why I had gut issues. Right?

A Relationship: Immune System Emergency

My IBS diagnosis was my wake-up call. That was the thing that actually set me on the path to trying to figure out what was going wrong in my life. And it all happened around the same time of me getting divorced.

I had been on multiple antibiotics. I was sick all the time cause there was a lot of stress going on in my life and everything that I know now about cortisol and what that does to your immune system. The thing is, I couldn’t take time off work because I was now the only breadwinner.

I couldn’t be like; I can’t afford downtime. I can’t afford to go off on a retreat for six months and figure out, cause I needed to get my own apartment, sort things out. So, I just powered through it, saw my doctor like every month, and got a course of antibiotics to deal with whatever, tonsil infection, ear infection, bronchitis. I had like a ton of upper respiratory tract things that were going on that entire year.

A RELATIONSHIP, IMMUNE SYSTEM, IMMUNE ISSUES, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

2010 is when I split up with my ex-husband and I got sick pretty much every single month. Every month I had something going wrong. And I remember the doctor that I was seeing at the time, he and I actually ended up becoming friends, and he ended up studying functional medicine too. He was the only person who looked at me and said, you know, there’s something wrong with your immune system. You need to do something about this.

But in the 10 minutes that you get with him once a month, all he could say is, maybe you should look into probiotics. That set me off on looking into probiotics and all those kinds of things.

A Relationship: Helping Others Heal

Then by the time the IBS showed off, I was like, all right, I really have to take some action on this. I started looking into changing up the way that I was eating and how I was living. Cause I was in a high pressured, stressful, corporate environment. It did not allow for weakness or perceived weakness.

A RELATIONSHIP, THE HAND OF GOD, GUIDANCE, HELPING PEOPLE, MOVING THE NEEDLE, HEALTH, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

That’s the beginning, that’s the origin story. It’s just evolved so beautifully from there. Now that I look back, I just see the hand of God guiding me and pushing me all the way to where I am right now and being able to help people in a way that actually moves the needle on health overall. I’ve helped over 350 women so far.

[00:07:22] Detective Ev: Nice. So cool.

[00:07:22] Raewyn Guerrero: In a one-on-one capacity, you know. That feels good.

[00:07:26] Detective Ev: Yeah. Well, and think about the ripple effect that that has, right? Because when someone works with us, like I know the people that I’ve impacted directly and indirectly from someone working with me, and it’s just kind of beautiful. If it’s 350 people, the only thing we know about that is that it’s definitely more than 350 people, cause they’ve done something too.

[00:07:40] Raewyn Guerrero: Totally.

You know, that’s the beauty of it. When I work with women, and I think that’s why I love working with women because they share everything with their girlfriends, with their daughters, with their sisters, with their mothers, with their husbands. They’re like, you should do this too. They get everybody on the same bandwagon. And it feels really good.

So, you’re right, that halo effect is just so powerful and so inspiring. I’m always humbled by it.

A Relationship: The Gut-Skin Connection

[00:08:03] Detective Ev: I know our main topic today is going to be about the hormone stuff. One thing that I have to go back to really quick is just because this was something that was a recent experience for me, is the ibuprofen thing. So many people act like ibuprofen is not a big deal because I can go to the store and buy this for a few dollars and get like 20 tablets.

Well, as you know, I got three wisdom teeth removed recently. It was a crazy amount of pain and swelling. And one of the reasons I do take my health seriously is so that when I need to use certain things like that, Yeah, I mean I was taking ibuprofen. I’d rather that than Percocet, personally. So, I’m taking ibuprofen at a decent dose every day, probably 400 milligrams in the morning, 400 milligrams mid-afternoon or early evening. That was keeping things at bay. Now, I was doing this for two weeks.

A RELATIONSHIP, CONNECTION, DAMAGING THE GUT, HURTING THE GUT, MANIFEST AS SKIN ISSUES, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

What was so nuts about this, Raewyn, is, you know, thankfully, even though my skin’s been super bad in the past, it’s gotten to a great place. And it’s nothing major, nothing to complain about, but I thought it was nuts how I was doing everything else, pretty much the same that I normally do, but the only thing that changed is the anesthesia, which you were telling me about at the conference. I figured it’s not great, but I didn’t realize how bad it could be, the anesthesia and the ibuprofen specifically. That already had led to like a couple skin breakouts that I noticed.

People don’t connect that this is something that is actually damaging the gut and hurting it. And then it can manifest as skin issues.

A Relationship: Powerful Meds on the Gut

Like how many people do you think are out there, especially young adults that are maybe 18, 19 years old with acne, connecting that? Oh yes, maybe it’s the ibuprofen I’m taking every day. And I’m only needing that cause I’m eating inflammatory foods that are causing pain, migraines. It’s just so disconnected for so many people.

I think it’s amazing for them when they finally come into this space and realize what you and I did. You’re looking at all these things separately at one point and then you realize, no, it’s all combined. The period stuff, the mental health stuff, the IBS, this isn’t separate. It’s truly all connected.

[00:09:44] Raewyn Guerrero: It totally is.

A RELATIONSHIP, HORMONES, GUT HEALTH, MOLD, NON-STEROIDAL ANTI-INFLAMMATORY DRUG, ANESTHESIA, EPITHEIAL LINING, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

I keep talking about this bidirectional relationship between the body, the gut, and the brain. That’s like been the entire basis of my whole practice since I started this in 2016. The gut, when we think about the fact that it’s where everything gets digested, assimilated, and we’ve got this one-inch layer of the epithelial lining, like that’s all it is. You start taking something powerful like a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug or something even more powerful like anesthesia, what do you think that’s going to do to that epithelial lining? What is it going to do to it?

I want to give you a quick story about a client of mine who she had a brain tumor. Now it was a benign brain tumor. She came to see me for anxiety. And this is when I was practicing as a hypnotherapist. So, I actually trained in hypnotherapy before functional medicine. That’s why I said, I was very obsessed with this mind-body connection, not so much the body-mind.

A Relationship: Causing Anxiety

She said, I don’t know where this anxiety came from. I’ve never been an anxious person. I’m a happy person. She was an Iranian woman, a praying person; she was Persian Christian. She said, I’ve never been anxious. I don’t know what’s going on, blah, blah, blah.

You know, I didn’t do detailed intakes the way that I do now. So, my intake was like in person. I’m sitting down and I’m talking to her and it’s over like two or three sessions. I’m getting this story of what happened with this brain tumor, da da da.

She’d had a really abusive first marriage, a really, really abusive, first marriage. And it created a lot of stress for her. But she said because she had this tremendous faith that everything would work out. She practiced breath work, yoga, meditation, and prayer every day. She believes that’s what prevented the tumor from becoming cancerous because it just ended up being like this ball.

The anxiety showed up shortly after she had surgery, she said this out of the blue panic. She’s like, I have no idea where this has come from. I’ve never been this person. I have these butterflies in my stomach. Like, I’m afraid to leave the house. That’s never been me. She’s obviously in a much better place, like psychologically, and a happier relationship, very well set up in her life.

A RELATIONSHIP, ANESTHESIA, SURGERY, ANXIETY, BODY SHUT DOWN, POWERFUL DRUGS, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

When we started digging into it, I said, do you think that this has anything to do with the fact that you were basically knocked unconscious, and your body was shut down by these really powerful drugs. The light bulb went off for her.

A Relationship: Causing an Emotional Rollercoaster

She said, you know, I think you might be right. None of this existed before I had the surgery. I was fine, you know, apart from headaches. She had headaches cause she had a brain tumor. But apart from the headaches, like she didn’t have any anxiety. So, we were able to kind of unpick that and realize, okay, you’re going to need some support.

I wasn’t practicing functional medicine back then, so we did a lot of work around trying to clean up her nutrition. She was still eating a lot of bread and stuff cause Persian cultures, middle Eastern cultures, they do eat a lot of Pitta and that kind of thing. So, we tried to clean up her nutrition cause I knew a little bit about the fact that certain foods could be quite harmful and some you could take them out and you might feel a little bit better. But I ended up referring her on.

ANESTHESIA, A MESS EMOTIONALLY, UPS AND DOWNS, ROLLER COASTER, SURGERY, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

I thought it was very interesting that that was my first experience of seeing that someone having experienced anesthesia would end up feeling that way. Then I experienced it, same thing, about two years or three years later when I had my wisdom teeth taken out. I was like a mess, emotionally, like a rollercoaster for a long time afterward, just so up and down.

Now, I thought about it, and I didn’t want to take the, not the Percocet, whatever they give you codeine, cause I knew, I was like, it’s going to make me constipated. No, I don’t want anything like that.

A Relationship: Multiple Traumas Affecting the Gut

[00:13:02] Detective Ev: Vicodin probably. Hydrocodone or whatever.

[00:13:02] Raewyn Guerrero: Yeah, that was it. I didn’t want to take any of that. But the anesthesia totally made me loopy for a while. Not just in the week after the procedure, like literally for about, I don’t know, maybe 6, 7, 8 months of just being up and down, being very volatile emotionally.

And I’ve seen it over and over, when clients come in. They’re like, I don’t know where this started. We do a little history taking, that lifestyle intake form, and I’d ask them questions. I’m like, have you had surgery recently? They’d be like, yes. I’m like, okay. You start seeing the patterns emerge. You know, I’ve had surgery for my hip, or I’ve had surgery for my wrist or whatever, and they’ve been knocked out.

The minute they get knocked out; the body gets shut down. It’s such a traumatic thing that happens to the body. You’re literally killing it, you know, to make it go to sleep in order for someone to perform usually very traumatic things to you as well.

A RELATIONSHIP, TRAUMA, PAIN, ANESTHESIA, GASTROINTESTINAL TRACT, ABSORBING, ASSIMILATING, NUTRIENTS, CONVERSION, HORMONES, NEUROTRANSMITTERS, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

Wisdom teeth surgery, it’s like for me, they were drilling into my jaw and cutting things out because it was impacted. It’s not pretty. That’s pretty traumatic. The trauma from the anesthesia, then the physical pain trauma as well, the pain trauma, these things have a direct effect on what’s going on with your gastrointestinal tract and how well you’re absorbing, assimilating nutrients, and how well that’s converting into things like hormones or neurotransmitters.

[00:14:19] Detective Ev: Sure. I’m very lucky that I still, overall, I think I feel very good afterwards.

A Relationship: Pre-Anesthetic Glutathione Treatment

But one of the things that I did as well, thankfully, because I have a gene panel ran through GX Sciences, it hit me right before the surgery because I hadn’t looked at it in a couple years. One of the things on there, it’s very common I guess in terms of genetic SNPs, but it’s just a genetic SNP that is focused around not being able to produce as much glutathione naturally as some other people.

A RELATIONSHIP, HORMONES, GUT HEALTH, MOLD, PRE-ANESTHIA GLUTATHIONE IV TREATMENT, BOUNCE BACK, POST SURGERY, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

One of the warnings there, and it hit me like two days before, it said on the recommendations, watch out for long-term anesthesia, like in terms of like long duration, I guess, is what I mean. Consider pre-anesthetic glutathione treatment. So, literally the day before, I went and got an IV drip for the glutathione. I guess I’ll never know how much that helped me or didn’t, but I just seemed to bounce back pretty quickly. It really did seem to be the ibuprofen that hurt me worse than anything.

Then the stress relief that I got after having these dang teeth removed. Because, Raewyn, I think over the last two years since I got the first one removed and then like an idiot didn’t get the other three out at the same time, what has always been in my head as a speaker, as a podcast guy, as someone who requires himself to talk for a living, I’m always sitting there in my head thinking, oh, when is it going to happen? When’s it going to happen? What am I going to have to cancel? So, I actually think this was a better reality for me because all three were impacted. I knew this was coming someday, I just didn’t know when. I was basically waiting until it forced me.

A Relationship: Saying “Yes” to Meds

This idea now that like, I’m pretty much good to go, this, I mean, I’m not going to grow any more wisdom teeth, that’s for sure. That’d be very strange if I did. I just feel like kind of a freeness from that. Now I know that I won’t need surgery for a while. So, I think the lower stress of that’s pretty good.

A RELATIONSHIP, SURGERY, ANESTHESIA, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

But this is something for people to watch out for. I guess, typically speaking in surgery, you don’t have a lot of other options, especially with the impacted wisdom tooth. I wasn’t doing just Novocain for that. Yeah. I don’t want to sound like less of a man, but yeah. We have this stuff for a reason. I’m like, you can knock me out. I don’t need to hear you cracking my teeth and drilling while we’re doing that.

[00:16:08] Raewyn Guerrero: No, you don’t need to feel that. You really don’t need to feel that. Like, honestly, if you have to think of any type of surgery you have to go through, anything to do with like the mouth or the throat, for me, just feels like, ugh. Just please don’t.

When I used to get recurring tonsillitis when I was little, I remember they were like, oh, you should go get your tonsils out. I never ended up doing it because when the ENT put me in the chair, I was seven years old. He starts talking about where are they going to make the incision and blah, blah, blah. My mom is there with me. I literally got up and ran out of the room. I was like, no one is touching my throat.

A Relationship: Gut and Hormone Bidirectional Connection

It’s such a sensitive and powerful area too, if you’re using your voice professionally. You know, back then I was singing a lot. I was seven, but I was singing a lot, writing a lot of music, that kind of thing. And I didn’t want anyone going near my throat. I’m like, you’re not going to touch my instrument. No one’s touching that.

So, I could understand with your teeth as well. Like, you need those, that’s survival. People going near it, it’s a big deal. It’s a really, really big deal.

[00:17:02] Detective Ev: Well, since we probably have spiked every audience member’s cortisol now, it’s a good time to transition into the hormone side.

[00:17:09] Raewyn Guerrero: Please do. Yeah, because we really have gotten them nervous. Like, yeah, I hate talking about bad teeth.

[00:17:12] Detective Ev: So, I know that before we recorded, we were talking about two main sections, and of course if something else comes up that’s totally fine. But I know that we wanted to discuss how the gut can relate to hormones, especially women’s hormones and also the mold thing. Maybe since we were kind of already talking about the gut, that might be the logical place to start.

You already mentioned the bidirectional relationship that’s well established in medicine and just we’re continuing to get more and more evidence of this. Evidence isn’t even the right word. We’re getting more and more definitive answers as to how this works.

A RELATIONSHIP, HORMONE, GUT HEALTH, MOLD, CONNECTION, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

But what is the connection then between the gut health side and how this affects someone’s hormones? Because I think even in the functional space, if you’re new to this especially, that might seem a little disconnected.

A Relationship: Food is Information

[00:17:50] Raewyn Guerrero: Well, I like to use music metaphors, car metaphors and music metaphors.

So, if we think of a symphony and we have got all the different players involved, you have a conductor. I feel like the gut is actually the conductor of your symphony because obviously what you put in your food is information. It’s going to get broken down and translated and redirected into different parts of the body where it’s needed. I just touched on the fact that what you’re consuming needs to be, not just good. Well, obviously it needs to be, but regardless of is it healthy food or not healthy food, like it has to be broken down and then it has to be converted.

Now, we have this whole detox chain or channel, whatever you want to call it. You got the liver, the kidneys, the gallbladder. You want to make sure that all of those things are working in harmony. If they’re not, it’s usually because of the fact that we’re overburdening them by crappy, toxic, processed food, which unfortunately people eat nowadays because it’s convenient.

CONVENIENCE, FOOD, HEALTH, LACK OF SELF-WORTH, DISCONNECTED, FOOD WAS DESIGNED, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

We opt for convenience over our own health, which is a really terrible sign of our low self-worth and the fact that our society is so disconnected from the way that food actually was designed. Food is there to nourish. We offer these crappy things in boxes, packages, plastic, whatever, and then we ingest them. We inhale them a lot of the time too.

If we talk about the fact that we’re not even chewing anymore, we’re not producing enough of the enzymes that are required to help break food down because we’re eating in a distracted or a hurried manner. Most of the time I was guilty of this.

A Relationship: The Rest and Digest Phase

I worked at a bank, and I sat at my desk. I ate breakfast there, lunch there, and sometimes the occasional dinner there. Because if you stayed past 9:00 PM they’d buy you dinner. People would hang out just to be like, we’re going to get dinner and we’re going to be able to order sushi or whatever. You know, you order whatever you want, it would get sent to you.

[00:19:42] Detective Ev: And now you’re eating late too.

[00:19:43] Raewyn Guerrero: So many things are wrong with corporate culture. Let’s just, not even. So, you’re eating at your desk and you’re eating in a very hurried, distracted manner. You’re not chewing, you’re inhaling, not producing enough saliva enzymes in order to predigest your food before it even hits your GI tract. That in itself, right there, is a massive problem. And that’s something everybody can change. We can all change that.

REST AND DIGEST PHASE, FIGHT OR FLIGHT, EAT, ABSORB FOOD, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

We don’t have to be rushing from here to there to there. Because when we are in that constant state of arousal, because that’s what it essentially is, and we talked about cortisol a little while ago, that is literally being in fight or flight. But when you need to eat and when you need to absorb food, you need to be in the rest and digest phase. Practitioners who are hearing this know this, but we’re all guilty. We’re like, okay, I have like 10 zoom meetings today. Do I build in breaks for myself or do I just power through?

A Relationship: Utilizing Lifestyle Tools

Believe it or not, finishing the FDN course actually gave me a gray hair because I literally sat for like 12 hours a day for the last couple of weeks, just so that I could power through. It’s like birthing a baby, like you just want it done.

A RELATIONSHIP, TOOLS, LIFESTYLE TOOLS, REST AND DIGEST, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

Now, the thing is people are living their lives like that all the time. I can have a stressful moment or a stressful period, but I know that I have my tools in place to recover from that. So, I can practice my breath work, go sit in my sauna. Thankfully, I have a tiny little sauna, a little Therasage, one person, zip up. You look like a jacket potato. Your head pops out of it and your arms can pop out too if you want to hold your phone or your remote or whatever. Cause I’ll put the TV on, and I’ll watch like a YouTube video or a podcast or something. But I know that I have tools that can help me get back into rest and digest really quickly, just like you do.

Because you were saying like, well, I took all this ibuprofen and I had the surgery, but I didn’t really have too much downtime. Everything was fine. And why is that? Because, you know, you have your tools. You know, like, oh, I’ve done my research. I know that I’m probably going to need a little bit more glutathione than other people to keep my liver doing its job. So, you go and do that. That’s the beauty about this way of thinking, this approach, because you become so in tune with your individual body and what it needs.

A Relationship: Reducing Cortisol

Then you’re not at the mercy of the one size fits all. Well, everybody goes for surgery, and everybody bounces back. You might not bounce back at the same rate as somebody else. You might need extra support.

In my case, you know, eating at my desk, I mean, nobody should be eating at their desk. It’s just wrong. You should be eating with friends and family sitting outside if you can, if it’s warm where you live. But sitting and communicating and having community with other people, chewing your food, making it an enjoyable, pleasurable experience.

REST AND DIGEST, RECOVERY, HORMONES, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

Because that in itself, well, one that reduces cortisol. It increases oxytocin when you’re in community. These are all things that we need in order to be able to function properly and for us to feel connected and to feel happy, and to feel balanced. We talk about homeostasis a lot in functional medicine to feel balanced, right? Homeostasis is a state of balance. Getting into rest and digest is probably the number one thing that we need to be doing in order to be able for our bodies to recover, for our hormones not to get used up.

You know, back in the olden days, and I say olden days, 2016, when I was learning about functional medicine, we used to talk about the cortisol steal. Now that’s not really so much of a thing. But it’s a great construct to understand what happens when you start using up too much cortisol because you’re in fight or flight all the time and you’re not giving your body a chance to chill out. And you can be in fight or flight for numerous reasons.

A Relationship: The Body Can’t Discern Different Stressors

One, you could have hidden infections, pathogens, parasites, yeast, mold, fungus, whatever. You could be experiencing psychological stress, partner stress, work stress, children stress, you know, psychological stressors. So, you got your biochemical stressors, those internal ones, you got your psychological ones, and then you could be experiencing some kind of physiological stress as well. Maybe you’ve broken a bone, or you’ve had surgery. Right?

A RELATIONSHIP, CORTISOL, STRESS, BIOCHEMICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, PHYSICAL, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

These three types of stressors, they are interpreted by the body in the exact same way. Cortisol does not know the difference between the biochemical, the psychological, or the physical. It doesn’t know. It just knows that, oh my God, I need to start pumping out more of this in order to keep up with what’s going on.

And then what ends up happening, it keeps pumping and keeps pumping. And because you don’t give it a chance to settle down, we have this wonderful analogy of like, think of your body as being elastic, like this rubber band. If you are being stretched continually, what’s going to happen? You’re going to end up snapping.

The idea with a rubber band is that you stretch it and then you give it moments of bounce, let it spring back into shape so it can maintain its elasticity. The body is the exact same way. If we’re not giving ourselves the downtime that we require, and downtime doesn’t only mean sleeping, but it definitely plays a big part in recovery overall and being able to kind of rebalance things and get us back into that rest and digest. Sleep is part of it, but you can do restful activities as well.

A Relationship: The D.R.E.S.S. Protocol

Meditation is obviously a restful activity. Chiang Tai Chi, gratitude journaling, there’s so many wonderful ways to actually incorporate rest into your life that’s not only about going to bed at 10:00 PM. Rest is one of the first ways that we can do that to get us back into rest and digest where we’re actually digesting our food, assimilating and getting it into a place where we’re going to be able to use this. We’re not going to be bloated, uncomfortable, and gassy, et cetera.

[00:25:04] Detective Ev: I have something to add. That was a lot of great stuff. It’s so funny how even as well versed as you are, so many of our practitioners that come on here are, what we’re talking about action-wise is not particularly profound, right? It’s like, chew your dang food. Actually rest, actually take that time.

A RELATIONSHIP, HORMONES, GUT HEALTH, MOLD, RESULTS, DRESS PROTOCOL, LAB TEST, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

This is why I think it throws people off with the FDN program especially. Yes, you have all these fancy labs, and we have practitioners that are insanely intelligent and well-versed. But D.R.E.S.S, diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, supplementation is still the core. If you nail that down, you’re going to get the results for your clients and yourself that you’re really looking for more often than not even if you never ran a lab test.

Now the lab test can help customize it. It can help accelerate those results greatly. I’ve found that to be true. But D.R.E.S.S is still the core of all of this. This happens all the time on this show. We go off onto all these things, then it kind of comes back to, well can you actually break down your food? Can you chew? And it is more than going to bed at 10:00 PM like you said.

A Relationship: Daily Intentional Actions to Lessen Stress

I also like that you brought up the body’s reaction to, you have the psychological or physical stresses. Then you have the hidden infections; you have other things like that, biochemical stresses. Right? But the body doesn’t care. It doesn’t care if you’re late on taxes, it doesn’t care if you just got into a fight with a family member, it doesn’t care if you have a parasite in terms of the stress reaction.

It almost seems, and I don’t mean it in a fearmongering way, there’s always hope to this. But in today’s modern world, it’s like practically impossible to truly shut this down in your body unless you are being intentional about it, cause we are being bombarded in a million different directions. Us just being under this artificial light right now while we record a podcast, we know that that spikes cortisol just a little bit. Just doing that is going to put you in that state.

A RELATIONSHIP, TAKE DAILY INTENTIONAL ACTION, REST AND DIGEST, TYPE A, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST, STRESS

If you are not taking those daily actions intentionally to put yourself in rest and digest that’s going to be kind of an issue, especially if you’re more of Type A people. Like, I don’t know. Cause you’ve worked on yourself a lot, but you strike me as someone like myself who at the core we’re very Type A. I think that’s correct. Right?

[00:26:56] Raewyn Guerrero: Absolutely. And that’s why we end up burning out and ending up with gut issues and all those things because we don’t know when to stop. We want to achieve things and we want to be perceived as being high achievers.

A Relationship: Childhood Trauma

I work with a lot of people who are exactly that way because they don’t want to be seen as being failures. They want to be seen as being, like, I can handle anything. We’re super women, we can do whatever.

EARLY CHILDHOOD TRAUMA, PRACTITIONERS DON'T TALK ABOUT, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

You know, men too. I’ve worked with a couple of men who are big high earners in their firms and that kind of thing. But they would show up with like OCD and anxiety and panic and all this internal stuff. A lot of it linked to early childhood trauma as well, which we don’t often talk about as practitioners.

I remember working with this lady, I’ll tell you this quick story. I have a lot of stories cause, like I said, 350 people, you end up with a lot of stories. But her story was wild. She came to me because she told me she was struggling with constipation; she was in her sixties. Looked incredible, she looked like she was in her thirties. She looked amazing. Worked out a lot, very fit, very trim. She’s on her third marriage and she was blaming her third husband for the constipation, which cracked me up.

Again, I’m doing my intake, asking questions, getting a feel for this. I said, so you’re saying that your constipation began when you got married. And she’s like, oh, no, no, no. I’ve had it like since I was 13. I’m like, okay, hang on. You are blaming your husband, but you are saying that this has been going on since you were thirteen. She’s like, well, he’s stressing me out. I’m like, well, you clearly have been stressed out from before.

A Relationship: Shifting Priorities

So, I said, tell me what happened when you were 13. She got really somber and silent and said, I was raped by my cousin when I was 13. I was like, okay, have you ever talked to anybody about this? Nope, never. And I’m like, okay. Wow!

Now, I am a hypnotherapist. We were able to do some really deep, intense work, getting her to release a lot of that. Her stomach, she said, while we were doing it, we were writing out a letter to the cousin, like what she would say to him. I don’t think she ever sent it, but she did actually meet him later on at a family reunion, and she said her stomach literally flipped.

But while we were writing the letter, she said, stuff’s starting to move. Like, I can feel like a physical change starting to happen. I was blown away by that because, again, we store so much of our trauma right there in the center.

A RELATIONSHIP, BODY SHIFTS, PRIORITIES SHIFT, BREAKING FOOD DOWN, ASSIMILATING, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

You think about it, when someone’s going to punch you, you kind of guard yourself, right? You tighten up your gut and all those things. Now when you tighten that up, everybody knows what happens. The blood is not focused on digesting. You’re not digesting when you are in fight or flight. Your body’s priorities shift to your extremities, to other things. They’re not focused on breaking down food or assimilating.

So, what we were saying just now about the body cannot tell the difference between your boss yelling at you, your girlfriend yelling at you, your broken leg or your screwed up jaw or having been raped when you were 13 years old, 40, 50 years earlier. It doesn’t know.

A Relationship: Stress’s Effect on Hormones

It gets stuck in that mode of trying to defend itself and it doesn’t know when to shut itself off. You have to consciously, intentionally be like, I am going to work on this. I am going to set aside 20 minutes for breath work or for gratitude, or for whatever those things are, and that’s going to help my cortisol come down or come back into where it’s supposed to be. Then it won’t be depleting all of my progesterone and estrogen or testosterone.

I can tell you from experience, like I’ve been living in multiple countries for the last three, four years because of the whole Covid thing and because of the fact that my husband was in a different country to me. We had a long journey to being able to live together.

A RELATIONSHIP, HORMONES, GUT HEALTH, MOLD, LAB TESTS, SHP, FLATLINING, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

When we ran my labs, my SHP, I kind of knew it was not going to be great, but I’m like, oh my God, I’m flatlining. I’m one of those people who is flatlining, even though I knew to take magnesium because I have genetic SNPs for slow methylation, slow estrogen metabolism, all those things. I’ve done my genes as well, and I know my COMP genes I need help with. I need a lot of magnesium because that can increase anxiety, et cetera.

So, I was taking all the things, I was doing the magnesium. But the fact that I was moving every two or three months, like this is a lifestyle, just a stress, right? Packing up your stuff every three months, separating from the person that you want to be with every three months, like that’s a big deal.

A Relationship: Hormone Production, Food Digestion, Blood Sugar Regulation and Food Choices

By the time it was all over and I was in one place and could run all these labs, I’m like, oh boy, look at my sex hormones. They don’t exist. I mean, I am in my mid-forties, so that has probably something to do with it. But I genuinely believe, and knowing everything that we’ve learned about the body, that stress has a direct impact on hormone production. People who say, oh, well, it’s just stress. I’m like, it’s not just stress, that’s a big deal. We need to neutralize that stress.

A RELATIONSHIP, STRESS, STRESSORS, HUGE IMPACT, HORMONE PRODUCTION, DIGESTING FOOD, BLOOD SUGAR REGULATION, FOOD CHOICES, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

At the time, I was selling my old house, moving, and same thing, I kinda like powered through that. That’s what we do, these Type A’s. We’re like, all right, I have to get all this furniture out of here by this date, so I know that I’m not going to be sleeping for like the next four or five days. Those things have an impact on things like your hormone production, and the way that you’re digesting food, and your blood sugar regulation, all those things, and the food choices that you’re going to make as a result of that.

Because when your blood sugar’s out of whack because you’re not getting the right kind of rest or sleep, or you’re under a lot of pressure, your body is craving quick release energy. It’s like, bring me the gluten-free donuts. At least they’re gluten free. But I’m like, they’re still terrible.

In England, by the way, there are all these kick butt apps that you can hit a button and they’ll deliver stuff to your door, like whatever it is. It’s like Vietnamese food, Thai food, sourdough, gluten-free donuts, they will deliver it all to your door.

A Relationship: You Gotta Do it All

I’m like, well, I’m not cooking cause I’ve just gotten rid of all of my cooking utensils. I’ve gotten rid of everything. I can’t make any food in my kitchen anymore cause I’m selling it all and getting rid of it all. What can I order today? You know, guilty, I am human. I am like, I definitely want the beautiful Vietnamese food. But I want a dessert to go along with it because I haven’t eaten all day and my blood sugar is tanking. I need something to kind of bring me up. Obviously, this is not the way that we want people living.

DO IT ALL, LIFESTYLE TOOLS, EATING RIGHT, CHEWING, SLEEPING, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

I saw it in my own labs. And I’m like, dang, I have to practice more what I preach, especially when I’m going through like super stressful situations. You know, I was practicing my meditation and stuff, but it’s not enough. You’ve gotta do it all. You have to make sure you’re eating right, you’re chewing, you’re sleeping, all the things.

The meditation was keeping me going. I’ll be honest. I think even if I wasn’t sleeping a lot, I was able to kind of do my 20 minutes and that would sort of like keep me alive, you know what I mean?

[00:33:21] Detective Ev: Yeah. There’s this thing too with, I think, especially all of us as practitioners, a lot of us listening are future or current practitioners. The one thing is we’ve been so darn sick in our lives, a lot of us. And I’m not comparing it to certain people, I mean, certain people have dealt with terminal cancer. I’m not saying that that’s the general person who comes on here, but we’ve been sick, man. We’ve dealt with a lot. There’s quite a bit built up there.

A Relationship: Looking for Health Clues & Validation

I think two things happen when we start moving that needle, even a little bit, maybe let’s say 30%. One, we feel so good comparatively, that you think like you’re completely fixed. And number two is you have this beautiful thing, you have this passion now.

So, for the Type A, this is like the ultimate excuse to go out and just be buffing out 12 hours a day because I have this passion, I have this energy. It’s not like I even hate the work. I literally love the work now and I wanted to work anyway, so this is a great excuse.

I actually really just appreciate your transparency in the labs, especially when you weren’t even asked. You were kind of flatlined with, I’m guessing the cortisol is what you meant at the time.

[00:34:18] Raewyn Guerrero: The cortisol and the testosterone, all the sex hormone hormones. Yeah. I was in what we call the exhaustive phase, you know?

[00:34:25] Detective Ev: Wow! But I doubt that this is unique for many practitioners, so I appreciate you being the one to share it.

A RELATIONSHIP, LABS, FUNCTIONAL LABS, CLUES, HEALTH DETECTIVE, VALIDATING, TEST RESULTS, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

We shouldn’t have this, but I imagine sometimes we get our pride involved. We’re like, oh, I’ve been doing this for five years, I should be better. It’s like, dude, that’s not what this is about. You use the labs not only to find clues, but a lot of the times it’s validating. Or two, it can be very insightful and could kind of shine a light on something that you might have thought that you felt pretty decent in a certain sense.

A Relationship: Impactful Health Detective Work

[00:34:46] Raewyn Guerrero: I probably did. I think that’s why I was running them because, I’m going to bring up the “V” word. I had been vaccinated in order to enter the United States, and a lot of issues showed up for me almost within a month of that. A ton of issues happened.

[00:35:00] Detective Ev: Wow! I did not know you ended up having to do that.

[00:35:02] Raewyn Guerrero: Yeah. That was not cool. It’s not something that I believe in. You kind of have to do it in order to become a permanent resident. It was a big deal and it really kind of knocked the wind out of my sails in a big way. Hormones kind of got messy. Some mast cell activation stuff kick kicked in.

FDN, HEALTH COACHING, LIFESTYLE TOOLS, HELPING PEOPLE, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

This is why what we do is so important. When I realized like, okay, I don’t feel like myself anymore. I don’t have the energy to just bounce out of bed the way that I used to anymore something is up. It went straight to like, let’s look at what the labs are saying.

I was having really weird periods as well. So, for people who are into hormones, I’m like, something is totally up because this is not a normal period for me anymore. Something’s wrong. I started going down the route of, well, I have to test, I have to figure out what it is. Because I know if I go to a regular doctor, they’re not going to be able to tell me anything.

I may have been feeling really tired. I was pretty tired, like really, really tired.

A Relationship: Knocking the Scales Out of Balance

You know, you kind of chalk it up to like, well, maybe it’s just because I moved country. I also lost my mom last year. I think there were a bunch of things that all happened in like quick succession.

It was like, lost my mom, moved country two or three times. I moved to Mexico, moved back to San Diego, moved to England, and sold house in England. It was like every two or three months I had something big happening. So, by the time November rolled around, I was getting sick a lot too. I had like a couple of colds and flus.

A RELATIONSHIP, VACCINE, SCALES OUT OF BALANCE, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

Like, okay, time to run our labs and find out what’s going on. Sure enough, the labs showed. And like I said, the vaccinations was my tipping point. That pushed me over the edge. Cause up until that point, I’d been managing, my body was compensating. But by the time the vaccines got into the picture, I had like three, which was horrible, pretty gnarly, once that happened, it just kind of knocked the scales out of balance even more.

Obviously, I was managing with food and all those other things, but by the time that happened, it just got a little bit stressful, so difficult. Sometimes that’s what our clients experience. They’re like, well, everything was fine until this one thing. And I’m like, was it really fine? Because now that I look back, I was like, was I actually fine? Because I was juggling a lot. There were a lot of plates in the air, right?

But I had this one tipping point that was like, my body just couldn’t deal with it. It kind of screwed things up a lot.

A Relationship: Covid & the Vaccine

[00:37:04] Detective Ev: Well, it’s fascinating and legitimately speaking, it’s probably my favorite part about you. You have no restrictions at all with topics and you know, that’s me at my core. I gotta be a little more correct cause I’m doing the podcast and stuff, but I’ll talk about anything with anyone, religion, politics, and we’re respectful about it. That’s what’s nice. You’ll sit down and listen to someone. There’s nothing wrong with it if you’ll do that, I think. But that’s a whole separate podcast in and of itself.

COVID, VACCINE, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

My whole point is, I actually appreciate you bringing this up, it’s not something I typically talk about on here. But I have seen this and in fairness, I’ve seen it with Covid itself too. This is what people need to think about because there are plenty of people who got Covid. I got covid, I was sick like 24 hours and totally fine afterwards. No, I did not get the vaccine, you know that. And then I have other people who got the vaccine, and they were totally fine afterwards.

I have both groups though, where I know people who were totally against the vaccine, got Covid, sick as a dog, still dealing with complications afterwards. And then the same thing with the vaccine. So, it’s not that I’m advocating for getting one versus the other, not that you have really a choice with the one. But I’m just saying that I do believe it was a powerful thing.

A Relationship: A Plethora of Crazy Symptoms

If we’re just talking about the virus, it’s powerful. If we’re just talking about the vaccine, it’s powerful. And so many people are walking around, never getting into rest and digest as we talked about earlier. They have a million chronic stressors. And if most of those chronic stressors that we’re dealing with are like, let’s say, little half percenters or one percenters, you get Covid, a powerful virus, or you get the vaccine, BAM. You just got hit with like a 5%, 10% or possibly even more. Well, you’re going to notice a 5%, 10% or a lot more than you’re going to notice a little half percent change. I think that’s what happened to so many people.

So, I appreciate your transparency with this because I assume anyone that listens to this podcast, no matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on, you’re very open to the idea that this could cause these issues. But I don’t think this had enough media attention in the way that it should because I know other people that, yeah, man, this screwed up a lot of stuff, especially for women. I saw that a lot with women.

A RELATIONSHIP, SYMPTOMS, STRESS, COVID, CRAZY SYMPTOMS, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

[00:38:54] Raewyn Guerrero: Yeah. You know what was interesting was when I called, cause I wanted to see a functional gynecologist. I’m like, look, my periods are weird. The first thing they ask, they go, well, what’s your main complaint? They’re on the phone. They’re like, what are you dealing with? I have no idea what’s going on in my periods. They’re like, oh, you’re not the only one. Like, pretty much everybody calling us is having like the craziest symptoms, like crazy.

A Relationship: More Complications & More Clients

You know, I hadn’t had crazy period symptoms for a really, really long time. Like once I had kind of gone Paleo in 2011, come off of gluten and sugar and all those things, I had like almost invisible periods. So, like this whole, I don’t want to be graphic, but just sort of this heavy bleeding, I was like, what is this? This is not normal. That was really freaky.

So, for me, it was like I was experiencing some pretty gnarly symptoms that were disturbing. And knowing that I’d taken such good care of myself, mostly, like more than other people, I’m like, I’m not going to McDonald’s, I’m not drinking, I’m not eating fast food. 

I’d eat the Thai food that came on delivery, but again, that would be like mostly like broth and vegetables. It was just quick. It’ll show up and I’ll eat it. But it’s still like I’m eating vegetables and chicken or beef or whatever, and it’s all real food. Do you know what I’m saying? Like the difference between ultra processed fast food as opposed to you can still get healthy fast food, you know?

PRACTITIONERS, MORE COMPLICATIONS, MORE CLIENTS, LAST THREE YEARS, COVID, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

As practitioners, more and more people are going to come into our practices with complications from what’s happened over the last three years.

[00:40:18] Detective Ev: Yeah, and thankfully we’re prepared in so much as we are used to dealing with complicated people. We’re used to not giving up and just saying, oh yeah, sorry we couldn’t help you after our little three month program. It must be you. We know what we’re doing, so it must be you. We don’t dismiss people like that ever.

A Relationship: A Camping Experiment

I’m just really thankful that I was already in communities like this and a part of FDN prior to this happening because I was, admittedly, a little nervous throughout. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I was. I never felt like actually fearful though. It was like a minor nerve that went away the second I turned on my Facebook and went and saw all my AFDNP members and all my colleagues who are just like posting about stuff, looking at different protocols, trying to defend ourselves in any way possible.

I don’t know if we were on Facebook with each other back then. Actually, we hadn’t met in person at that time.

Raewyn Guerrero: No.

COVID, CAMPING EXPERIMENT, SLEPT OUTSIDE, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

Detective Ev: So, I used Covid as an experiment cause you know how much I love the light side of things. I love studying sunrise, all the effects that light has. Well, I figured, when am I going to get to do this again as an adult? So, I camped for two months straight in the beginning of the pandemic, like all of June and all of July 2020. I literally slept outside like 53 nights out of the 60 cause there were thunderstorms.

What was nuts, Raewyn, is outside of the Covid stuff, I was the tannest I’ve ever been, I looked awesome. I was only sleeping like six hours per night, but I felt great. It’s because sunset here was like 10 PM and then it would rise at like 4:30 AM. The light would start coming up. So, naturally I just would wake up.

Raewyn Guerrero: Wake up with the light, yeah.

A Relationship: Wanting to Know What’s Real

Detective Ev: I’m recovering from the gym. What I would normally only be able to do three times a week, I could do six times a week and my body was just recovered and ready to go the next day. And I’m thinking about this like, this was 60 stupid days. This is what we were supposed to do for the entirety of our life.

[00:41:51] Raewyn Guerrero: Right? I love that you’re talking about this, cause you probably know about Jack Cruise, right? Like, are you a big Jack Cruise fan?

[00:41:56] Detective Ev: Oh, I got into him probably seven, eight years ago. Yeah. That’s when I learned about this.

[00:41:59] Raewyn Guerrero: Well, exactly, because he’s sort of like this leading authority. So, everybody was listening. If you don’t know about Jack Cruise, go follow him on YouTube. Follow him on Instagram. He’s very outspoken, very contrary. You know, he pisses off a lot of people, but he’s so awesome because all he does is share facts.

 And this is what I like. You know, you said, oh, what side of the political? This is not about politics to me. This is just about what’s true and what isn’t. Right? So, I like to err on the side of like, I’m going to stick with truth. Like, I want to know what’s real.

A RELATIONSHIP, INNATE INTELLIGENCE, DESIGNED, HEALING, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

I don’t want propaganda. Yes, I said it. I don’t want the media spin on something. I want to know what’s real. And what I do know is real is that we have an innate intelligence that was designed specifically so that we can deal with the world and anything that gets thrown at us.

A Relationship: Mold is Everywhere

You know, we keep talking, like Mindy Peltz last week. She said, when your finger gets cut, what does it immediately start to do? You don’t bleed to death. It starts knitting together and it starts healing. Your body is designed to heal. So, no matter what gets thrown at it, that’s what its job is, your cells.

And they don’t need to be told. Although sometimes they might, because we’ve been telling ourselves, oh, you can’t heal, you need a prescription, you need a doctor, you need a da, da da, da, da. You know, maybe you need to just start telling it like you’re perfectly capable of healing.

Now, that’s not to say ignore if you have, you know, you can get vitamin D from the light or whatever. But spending time outside, I think that is probably the number one healer.

And we were going to talk about mold, so I’m going to land the plane with this. Okay?

[00:43:30] Detective Ev: Thank you. Cause I was like, yeah, we’re not getting that today.

[00:43:31] Raewyn Guerrero: No, I’m going to land the plane with the mold right here.

A RELATIONSHIP, MOLD, MOLD IS EVERYWHERE, RESILIENCY, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

So, for everyone who is dealing with mold, myself included, because that was one of the things that showed up in my labs. It’s in the house and we’re working on that and fixing it and all that stuff. Because that’s another thing. It might have been here forever, but I couldn’t deal with it. Everyone’s so fixated on remediating, remediating. Well, what about your own body? Right? What about your body is not able to deal with it? Cause mold exists everywhere.

A Relationship: How Was Your House Built?

The thing that’s happened in the last three years is that everybody has spent time inside. Everyone has been glued to their computers under their artificial crappy light. They are not interacting with other humans because they’ve been afraid of them or told to be afraid of them.

Then we have this whole 5G thing that’s coming about where that’s amplifying and stressing out things like mold and they’re starting to proliferate more. So, the more time that you spend inside, the more you’re going to be exposed to stuff that’s growing in your house.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed how houses in America are built. Our neighbors’ house is being built so I’ve been watching the entire process. It’s been going on for a while. Now, the whole of winter, it has been raining here, and his house is all made of wood. The whole thing is made of wood and has been soaked to the core.

A RELATIONSHIP, MOLD, MOLDY WOOD, MOLDY HOUSE, BLACK, BUILDING, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

Now they’re starting to wrap it and all of that wood is black. I’m like, he’s building mold into his house. That’s a brand-new house. Because it has rained for four months straight, that wood’s been wet. People are like, oh, I’m moving into a new house. I’m like, do you know how it was built?

[00:44:53] Detective Ev: Yeah. Define new anyway, right?

[00:44:55] Raewyn Guerrero: Yeah. Do you know like how it was built? Was it built in winter? Was it built in summer? Were there a lot of thunderstorms? So, mold in your home, in your environment, like having a proliferation of it, obviously, not good. You don’t want to be living in a moldy house.

A Relationship: Strengthen the Body’s Resiliency

But the thing is, mold exists in nature; it’s there to break things down. Right? That’s the whole point of it. Now we have to be able to be resilient enough within our own bodies to be able to withstand it. Obviously, minimizing things like 5G exposure, turning off your Wi-Fi router at night because the EMFs are a big contributor to what’s going on and the fact that we aren’t getting any light.

A RELATIONSHIP, SUNLIGHT, REDUCE YOUR SYMPTOMS, REGENERATIVE, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

My big turning point actually came when we went to Mexico for a month. A lot of my symptoms resolved just from being able to be outside for an hour to two hours a day, being in the sun for two hours a day. Sunlight is probably the number one thing you can do to reduce your symptoms of mold or to get your body into a place where it’s actually doing its job. It’s regenerative.

We’re like plants, we keep saying that. We’re like plants just with more complicated emotions. We need light and not artificial light, not blue light from our phones. We need to be outside, waking up, going outside, walking outside, exercising outside. You know, you were saying you did that for 60 days, but that’s how people lived before industrialization and before the way the world is now.

I remember growing up as a kid, we spent lots of time outside. You played with your cousins; you rode your bike. Now children are like, you know, with carpal tunnel syndrome from playing on their devices all the time and the blue light exposure and all the things that are really making us sicker as a society.

A Relationship: Playtime Before Video Games Existed

We’re becoming sicker, quicker. It’s because of things like EMFs, because of things like not getting the right amount of light. It’s not just about the food anymore, it isn’t. Honestly, it’s about the way that we’re living. We’re living ourselves into disease.

[00:46:48] Detective Ev: Yeah, absolutely.

I’m not surprised, but it is interesting that you found some relief by going to Mexico. The USA, listen, I’m never the person to talk about on the USA. I’m very grateful to be here. Also, there is the nationalism thing that is taken a little too far where we think we’re so superior to a place like Mexico. Yet, if you go down there, you might actually feel better because sometimes our supposed progression is actually our regression in terms of our health and just being human.

You know, we have these kids that probably, I mean, at least artificially, they have way more dopamine than before, but they feel less satisfied and less happy. Cause they’re getting dopamine from the wrong place and these surges.

Raewyn Guerrero: They’re miserable. They’re all depressed.

A RELATIONSHIP, PLAY OUTSIDE, BEFORE VIDEO GAMES, SUNSHINE, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

Detective Ev: Not that it was ideal, but I’m so thankful that at least I got to grow up in the generation where, we did play video games all night, but we did that after hanging out from 11:00 AM until 10:00 PM when our parents made us go in. We were biking to the store and we’re Ding-Dong Ditching and doing stupid crap. I think they call it Knock, Knock Run in Europe or something like that. You know, we got to do these things and it was cool. Man, I can’t even imagine being before where you actually just did outside and then there is no video games.

A Relationship: What Humans Need

[00:47:47] Raewyn Guerrero: You go camping. You pitch a tent; you learn how to pitch a tent.

You probably played baseball. We played cricket. So, you play cricket, you know, you play outside, you play in the sun, you run around, you get your metabolism going, you get your blood pumping, you sweat. You do the things that humans need. We need to sweat; we need to eat.

IDEAL WORLD, COMMUNITY, CONNECTION TO OURSELVES, CONNECTION TO OUR FAMILY, CONNECTION TO NATURE, LIGHT, EARTH, CLEAN FRESH AIR, OUTSIDE, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

Again, you used to sit down with your family and nobody’s like glued to their phone while they’re eating cause that didn’t exist. They were sitting down, you’d talk about your day, about things, you know. And not everybody had happy childhoods either. I’m just saying, in the ideal world, we would have this sense of community, of connection to ourselves, to our families, and to nature, to light and to the earth, and to clean air and being outside in it, fresh, clean air.

That’s not happening so much anymore because we made cities, like, we made people think, oh, moving to a city is a sign of like, progress. But is it? I lived in a city for 22 years and I can tell you right now, you just used that expression, like the thing that we think that we’re being progressive, but actually, it’s our demise. It’s leading to our demise.

And the whole AI thing actually completely freaks me out right now too, because everyone’s like, oh, AI, AI. And I’m like, I’m not so sure this is a good thing. Didn’t everybody see The Matrix? Didn’t you see what happened there? The machines took over because they think they’re smarter than us, you know?

A Relationship: What’s Real Progress?

Someone I know, like a really good friend of mine, he said, I just had a conversation with artificial intelligence. I’m like, why? Why would you do that? And he’s like, because I wanted to see if I could and if it could emote, and it can. I’m like, that’s terrible and terrifying.

So, there’s a really great line, I think Jeff Goldblum said it in Jurassic Park. He’s like, we’re so fixated on trying to figure out if we could, we haven’t decided if we should, we haven’t thought about it. So, we’re like, can we get this far as a human race? Can we go here, do this, create this? Do we need it? Is it actually helping us? Is it actually good for us? Should we?

You know, those are the kinds of questions when you talk about being intentional, so much of progress is just progress for the sake of progress. Not necessarily do we actually need these things, or maybe we need to come back to some basics because people are sick. They’re sick and they’re dependent on medications and they are lonely. Which is another huge thing that came out during Covid, how lonely people were. That’s not helping anyone live longer, happier, healthier.

A RELATIONSHIP, GOALS, DESIRES, SUCCESS, PROGRESS, DEMISE, HAPPY, CORPORATE LADDER, EMPTY, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

All these things that we get thrown at us, that were supposed to fulfill us and supposed to make us happy, climb the corporate ladder, get the promotion, get married, have 2.5 children and the white picket fence, and all the things that we’re told are going to make us happy, then we get there and we’re empty. We’ve disconnected completely.

A Relationship: Catching People Before They Fall in the River

That whole process of being intentional I find so powerful. And I feel like when we become ill, that’s when we wake up to it. I wish we didn’t have to.

Reed and I always say this, I said, I wish I didn’t have to keep pulling people out of the river. I want to catch them before they fall in. Because it would be so much more powerful, the kind of lives that they could live if they were not spending six to 12 months recovering. Right?

If they were actually able to kind of tap into who they really are and what they’re meant to be doing and being aligned with that and that vision of who they’re supposed to be, rather than, oh, I’ve gotta fight all my symptoms right now, I gotta figure this out. You know that takes time and energy and you don’t have a ton of energy and time.

A RELATIONSHIP, MEANT TO BE, PURPOSE, NO ENERGY, SICK, WORRIED, FUTURE, BODY, HEALTH, NO FOCUS, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

If you want to be focused on who you’re meant to be and your purpose and all that, if you don’t have the energy to do that because you’re sick and you’re worried about the future and about your body, you don’t have the bandwidth to start focusing on what you’re meant to be doing on this earth.

[00:51:17] Detective Ev: Absolutely.

Raewyn, we are shockingly, and I mean that sarcastically, over our 50 minutes. This is the only downside of having rapport with the people before they come on. We’re just getting started. You give us like a couple more hours, we’ll go. We have like five different subtopics here that we could have done.

Where to Find Raewyn Guerrero

I’m really glad that we got to do this podcast today with video and stuff. I think your personality was very easily portrayed here. The people that resonate with you are going to know, okay, that’s like my person. This is who I want to work with. So, who do you typically serve now and then where can people find you if they’re that person?

[00:51:49] Raewyn Guerrero: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share that. I would love to be able to gift people something. Can I do that?

Detective Ev: Okay. Yeah, sure.

WHERE TO FIND RAEWYN GUERRERO, A RELATIONSHIP, HORMONES, GUT HEALTH, MOLD, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

Raewyn Guerrero: Yeah? So, you can download, I have like a whole roadmap on how it would be like if you were going to work with someone who was like me. So, you don’t have to work with me, but you can. You can see like, oh, from start to finish, this is how you’re going to be carried and nurtured in this wonderful container – the labs that I use, the frequency and cadence of our meetings, those kinds of things, the supplements, all those sorts of things. So, if you want that, you can download it and you just have to go to my website gutsyexecutivecoach.com/download-pathway.

It’s the CEO pathway, cause I do work with women who are in business and who are Type A’s kind of like myself. That’s pretty much who I’ve attracted and who I want to continue to help because they have so much drive and they want to do good in the world. They want to elevate the people around them.

Conclusion

But if they don’t have the energy to do so because they’re feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, fatigued, tired, stuck, anxious, fearful, which is generally the kind of demographic of the people that I work with, they’re struggling with things like their hormones, and they don’t know why they’re not getting answers from their doctors or their therapists, come my way.

PROACTIVE, GETTING THEM BEFORE THEY FALL IN THE RIVER, ON THE RIVERBANKS, FDN, FDNTRAINING, HEALTH DETECTIVE PODCAST

And if you want to be proactive and you don’t have to end up in a doctor’s office, come my way too. That is really where I do want to really focus a lot of my work now on – getting them before they fall into the river, like getting them on the riverbanks.

[00:53:10] Detective Ev: Excellent.

I love that river analogy. I might actually steal that myself cause it’s so freaking true. And we’re just like wired as humans that we need to fall in first sometimes before we realize it. But I think with podcasts like this, and there’s many other great ones out there, I think we can raise that awareness so that eventually, yeah, we’re getting the people before they go in. Or maybe they only have a foot in and they’re not, you know, halfway out there.

Raewyn Guerrero: Or drowning. Yeah, nobody’s drowning. No drowning and no life rafts needed. We can teach you how to swim.

[00:53:35] Detective Ev: Yeah.

Raewyn, two years later, thank you so much for coming on and sharing this with us today.

[00:53:40] Raewyn Guerrero: Thank you so much, Evan.


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