155. Taylor Dukes: How She Beat Cancer with Functional Medicine

Speaker 1 Life was good. I have a thriving functional medicine practice of my own at this point.
I've met the man of my dreams. We have two children, and I got the curveball of my life.

Speaker 1 So I did the scan, and they found a massive brain tumor in my right frontal lobe.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, what?

Speaker 1 You've got to be kidding because I have no symptoms.

Speaker 2 So now you're in for the journey of a lifetime. Yeah.
So tell me about that journey.

Speaker 1 I knew that I probably needed to get it out, but I was also like, okay, if this has been growing for years, same thing with functional medicine. The disease doesn't just happen overnight.

Speaker 1 It's drops in the bucket over time that lead to the full-blown manifestation of a disease and symptoms.

Speaker 2 All cancer is a healthy cell that became metabolically sick. Why do we believe that healthy cells can become metabolically sick? But we don't believe that metabolically sick cells can become healthy.

Speaker 1 I knew enough about the body that I wasn't just gonna like jump to surgery in fear and I just felt led to take an integrative approach.

Speaker 1 I like saying integrative because you take the best of the conventional, the best of the holistic, and you integrate the two for the best possible outcome.

Speaker 2 We need to start thinking about being in service to the body and that everything that's gonna enter your body from now on has got to be in service to you.

Speaker 2 Before your surgery, did the tumor actually shrink?

Speaker 1 It did. It was a miracle, which is insane.

Speaker 2 So to give the people that are listening to this hope, can you give me a little more detail about what you did on this journey?

Speaker 1 I think mindset is so huge. And I think so many people hear the word cancer and it's a death sentence.
Getting into your question of what I did is...

Speaker 2 Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

Speaker 2 I'm your host, Gary Brecca, human biologist, where we go down the road of everything, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between.

Speaker 2 And today's guest is going to be really, really impactful for you because of the journey that she's had and now the mission that she's on.

Speaker 2 You know that I always say that I believe the most impactful people in the world and by far and large, the most impactful people I've ever had on my podcast are always those people that have solved a major problem in their life.

Speaker 2 And when they solve this problem, it puts them on a path to God's purpose for them.

Speaker 2 And they go fulfilling their purpose with passion and a level of commitment that is unmatched by anyone else in the industry.

Speaker 2 And sometimes they're practitioners, sometimes they're scientists, sometimes they're soccer moms and dads that just solve the problem in their life.

Speaker 2 And their level of passion and commitment goes beyond anything that you've ever seen. And today's guest is no.
no stranger to that. So welcome to the podcast, Taylor Dukes.
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 I'm so honored to be here.

Speaker 2 I really, I've read about your story and

Speaker 2 I've been watching you online. And of course,

Speaker 2 we just walked around the biohacking lab here for a while.

Speaker 2 Like all my guests, we start running the podcast before the podcast starts.

Speaker 1 It is next level.

Speaker 2 And my team is like,

Speaker 2 say that on the podcast. Say that on the podcast.
But I would really love for my audience to get to know you for those that don't know you.

Speaker 2 for you to talk a little bit about your journey because i got to say your journey is one of the most unique uh sadly that we you know we've had on this podcast.

Speaker 2 But I think it's going to inspire people with a lot of hope.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So I always say that people get into kind of the integrative functional medicine world because they're sick or they're smart.
You know, you're sick or they're smart.

Speaker 1 People like you are smart.

Speaker 1 But most people and a lot of my colleagues, you know, that are functional medicine providers, they're sick. And then the conventional medical model fails them.

Speaker 1 And that's kind of how they go on their own and do research. And so I was sick.
That was my story. I was, you know, nursing major straight out of TCU and I had the option.
Texas Christian. Yep.

Speaker 1 Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. Go Christians.

Speaker 2 Yep. Yes, let's go.
Thank you, Jesus.

Speaker 1 God's going.

Speaker 2 There's been a lot of Jesus on the podcast lately. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, I think God's doing something. He's waking people up.
There's a lot coming to light. It's really cool to see.

Speaker 2 I think it's a spiritual shift in this country. I totally agree with you.

Speaker 1 So I went to TCU and I had the opportunity to go on medical mission trips abroad and it was an incredible experience, but I got really sick.

Speaker 1 So I spent time in Africa and Ecuador and I ended up getting flown back from Ecuador to the States sooner than I had planned because I had all these mysterious symptoms.

Speaker 1 And so here I am a nurse, and my whole job is to advocate for patients. And I can't even advocate for myself.
And so I was going from doctor to specialist. You know, they're like, try this medicine.

Speaker 1 What kind of symptoms were you having? So my hair was falling out. I had joint pain.
And let me just back up. I was never the sick kid.
So to me, it seemed like everything happened overnight.

Speaker 1 But then when I look back, it was drops in the bucket that led to full-blown manifestation symptoms.

Speaker 1 But I was having really bad joint pain, super inflamed. I had full body rashes, acne.
I'd never had acne in my life.

Speaker 1 So tired, like I would just lay in bed.

Speaker 2 And I was the go-go girl.

Speaker 1 I've always had energy and been super athletic, but I was really sick. And so I was going to the rheumatologist for my joint pain, you know, the gastro for my stomach.

Speaker 1 And they were all like, here, try this pill, try this prescription. We'll do a colonoscopy.
And nobody really had answers.

Speaker 1 And so it wasn't until my mom, she kind of, I was raised in a very healthy home and we always kind of go back to our roots, you know?

Speaker 1 And so my mom was like, Taylor, this is not you. You've never been the sick kid.
And so she really encouraged me to go to kind of an integrative functional medicine doctor.

Speaker 1 And at the time, I thought, this is woo-woo. This is so out there.
I didn't learn any of this in nursing school, but I was so desperate that I was willing to do anything.

Speaker 1 And so she talked to me about my diet. She asked me if I was a C-section baby.
She kind of traced the whole line, you know, when you went to Africa, were you given a lot of shots?

Speaker 1 And so she really took back, took me back and looked at the whole timeline. And so that ended up changing my life, my health, which changed the trajectory of my career.

Speaker 1 So after I had healed and, you know, gotten off meds, times and places.

Speaker 2 So what essentially, what did you do to heal? When you say after I healed, how did you go on that journey?

Speaker 1 So we looked at my diet. We completely turned around my diet.
And, you know, he or she was asking me like, you know, do you eat gluten? Do you eat this? And to me, I'm like, well, yeah, I always have.

Speaker 1 You know, I partied in college. So, but I had never eaten.

Speaker 2 Gluten's the least in my concerns.

Speaker 1 I was going to Waterbury.

Speaker 2 To Jack Daniels. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Exactly. And so for me, I was like, I've always eaten this way and I've never been sick.
So it can't be the food. But man, was I wrong.

Speaker 1 And so she, you know, I had a lot of of parasites from living abroad. I had heavy metal toxicity.

Speaker 2 Wow. Cause I was thinking mold, mycotoxin, heavy metal parasite.
Yeah, exactly. I'm actually doing a parapurge cleanse right now.

Speaker 1 Yes. And everyone should.
It's something that other countries do it. We deworm our pets, but why aren't we talking about it in humans? Because parasites suppress our immune system.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 God forgive it.

Speaker 2 We talk about ivermectin. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Why, why was it

Speaker 2 so taboo?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
I did all of that for, you know, treatment. And so anyway, she really helped support my immune system.
I also gone through a lot of stress and trauma personally in my personal life.

Speaker 1 That affects our immune system. And so it was just a perfect storm.
But yeah, so she changed my diet.

Speaker 1 She started talking to me about what was in my environment, what chemicals I was using in and on my body. And so I just really cleaned up my entire lifestyle.

Speaker 1 And I was also doing a lot of high-intensity interval training prior to getting sick because that's just, you know, what you do. You go to cycling classes and orange theory.

Speaker 2 Yeah. High-intensity interval training is great for you.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yes.
But at that time, since I was sick and my adrenals were tanked, you know, that was just adding stress. Another stress layer to the body.
And I was gaining weight.

Speaker 1 So it was just like this never-ending cortisol bomb. Yeah.
So, anyway, so she basically, yeah, she just changed my life. And I was like, this helped me so much.

Speaker 1 How can I use my medical degree or my nursing degree to go help others?

Speaker 1 So that's when I went back to nurse practitioner school and I worked for Amy Myers as her nurse for years and kind of got my feet on the ground in functional medicine, you know, learning protocols and testing and treating all of those things.

Speaker 2 Wow, that's so awesome. But then you had a monumentous

Speaker 2 shift, right? I mean, people think that's the journey. That was not the the journey.
That was healing 1.0. Yeah, that was healing 1.0.

Speaker 2 And this is what really maybe sparked you to really go more of a functional medicine route, right? In your life, because you know what's really interesting is

Speaker 2 I love this, this, this term, lifestyle medicine.

Speaker 2 It's becoming more in vogue. I still don't hear the term that much.
You hear functional medicine.

Speaker 2 And I think lifestyle medicine is

Speaker 2 the medicine where you modify the modifiable risk factors, right? Before you even intervene with any kind of even supplements or pharmaceuticals or synthetics or chemicals or modalities or anything,

Speaker 2 you change the

Speaker 2 lifestyle. Because, you know, in my background

Speaker 2 in big data, we realized that the reason why the majority of people are not living longer, healthier, happier, more fulfilling lives were because of what we called modifiable risk factors. And

Speaker 2 that's essentially what started your career, which is amazing because given the timeframe of that,

Speaker 2 you know, that's

Speaker 2 this practitioner's ahead of their time.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's outside the box to really start thinking about gluten, sleep, stress, relationships, you know, all of these things that are, that are, that are the basic foundational principles of optimal health.

Speaker 2 Before, like you said, I went to every doctor.

Speaker 1 Traditional doctor, yeah.

Speaker 2 Traditional doctor in the world, SSRIs, anti-inflammatories, whatever they suggest.

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Speaker 2 Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. So let's move on to the second part of your journey.
You're a functional practitioner. You're licensed.
You're a nurse. You're practicing.

Speaker 2 You're actually practicing under a

Speaker 2 renowned physician

Speaker 2 that I'm very familiar with.

Speaker 2 I obviously think the world to Dr. Hyman.

Speaker 2 He's been here.

Speaker 2 He's actually one of my mentors and doesn't even know it. Well, he knows it now because I told him, but

Speaker 2 I think he's written what, his 15th New York Times best-selling book. He's incredible.
I've probably read them all.

Speaker 2 So now you're in this world. And this is what is super fascinating to me.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So pick up the story from there.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So life was good.
I've met the man of my dreams. He was an Air Force pilot.
We have two children. I have a thriving functional medicine practice of my own at this point.

Speaker 1 I founded a wellness center with a partner. And I don't know if you're familiar with the Pernuvo full body MRI company.
Very familiar. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So I'm trying to put, I'm trying to actually bring them to the Middle East right now because I'm a huge fan. Huge fan.

Speaker 1 So they reached out and they said, hey, you know, we're getting a location in Texas near near you and we would love to gift you a full body preventative scan. And I'm like, all right, cool.

Speaker 1 I'm healthy. You know, this is 2020.
This is 2022. 2022.
Yeah. So two and a half years ago.
Yeah. Yeah.
So not too long ago. And I got the curveball of my life.

Speaker 1 And so I did the scan, you know, took the picture, put on the scrubs, and I was called and told that they found a massive brain tumor in my right frontal lobe. And I'm like, what?

Speaker 1 You've got to be kidding. This is the wrong person because I have no symptoms.

Speaker 1 So it was a shock to say the least, but I did in fact have a huge brain tumor.

Speaker 2 Wow. And you said it was the size of a plum.

Speaker 1 It was the size of a plum.

Speaker 2 How did it displace that much gray matter and you were having no symptoms?

Speaker 1 Truly, I can't even explain it because from a medical perspective, I mean the brain is so symptoms, like one millimeter shift, you can have symptoms in your brain. So literally, it's a God thing.

Speaker 1 I don't have no explanation because it's truly beyond my comprehending.

Speaker 2 Did you see this image yourself? I mean, did your heart just drop?

Speaker 1 It did. I'll never forget.
We were headed to the museum with my children. And I remember opening the app and I actually didn't get a phone call.
I actually have to back it up.

Speaker 1 I opened up the app because I'm the practitioner. I'm the one who saw it first.
No one had told me. So it said abnormal finding.
And I look and it said nervous system. And I'm like, that's weird.

Speaker 1 So I went to go look at it and it was a huge picture. And it does not take a radiologist or a trained medical professional.
I'll show you after. Okay.
I mean, it is huge. It's this huge white mass.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 So, yeah. And then I ended up calling and they confirmed that it was in fact me.
And yeah, the craziest thing was I had no symptoms. And so I was a little bit in disbelief.

Speaker 1 Like, surely this is the wrong person. And they messed up charge.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah. They said that.

Speaker 1 But after a follow-up and meeting with a local neurosurgeon several days later,

Speaker 1 it was in fact me. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay. So now you're in for the journey of a lifetime.
Yeah. Right.

Speaker 2 So tell me about that journey.

Speaker 1 So when I first got diagnosed, you know, I had a 10-month-old at the time and a three-year-old. And so it was scary as I'll get out.

Speaker 1 You know, and as much as I know about integrative and functional medicine at this point, I know nothing about cancer.

Speaker 2 And now I feel like I have my PhD. Right, right, right.
I do too, just because of all the people I've worked with.

Speaker 1 Yes. And it's only increasing.
That's the hard thing. And so

Speaker 1 I slowed down and I prayed and I said, okay, God, like, this isn't a surprise to you. You know this.
You know the number of my days, but like, what do I do? And I didn't freak out.

Speaker 1 I didn't make decisions in fear. I wasn't reactive.

Speaker 1 And I knew that I probably needed to get it out. But I was also like, okay, if this has been growing for years, same thing with functional medicine.
Symptoms, a disease doesn't just happen overnight.

Speaker 1 It's drops in the bucket over time that lead to the full-blown manifestation of a disease and symptoms. And so I knew enough about the body that I wasn't just going to like jump to surgery in fear.

Speaker 1 And I just felt led to take an integrative approach. And so I started doing research and reading books and contacting integrative cancer clinics.
And, you know, it was also hard.

Speaker 1 We had to execute a living will. I had to.
make a lot of decisions as a mom and a wife and a business owner.

Speaker 1 Like I had to get my husband access to all my business stuff because I'm like, what if something happens? Right. So there was the life part of me that was trying to figure things out.

Speaker 1 And I also am so blessed because most people that have a brain tumor, they have a seizure, they wake up in the emergency room, they get the next call, on-call neurosurgeon.

Speaker 1 You don't have time to research, pray. I mean, it's like, you don't pack bags.
You don't send an out-office email. It's, it's go time.

Speaker 1 And so for me, I'm like, okay, God, thank you for giving me this information. I just want to like walk this journey well.
Yeah. So I ended up going to Hope for Cancer.

Speaker 1 It's a holistic cancer center in Mexico. I went to the Cancer Center for Healing in California in Irvine.

Speaker 1 And I did everything from hyperbaric oxygen, red light beds, methylene blue, curcumin IVs, high dose vitamin C. I mean, you name it.
I've done it.

Speaker 1 And so I spent five months prior to surgery. I did end up getting brain surgery, doing research, getting second opinions.

Speaker 2 Now, did you go down and stay down there? I did for a couple of weeks. Now, a lot of these you can do here.
You can do, you can do hyperbarics, turmeric, methylene blue. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You could do, I mean, I have all this stuff.

Speaker 1 I actually come to your place. I can't.

Speaker 2 I actually think.

Speaker 1 I'm like, where were you when I went through all of this?

Speaker 2 And I actually want to go down this cancer bandwagon. I mean, obviously, I'm not licensed to practice medicine.
I'm a human biologist, and I emphasize that all the time.

Speaker 2 But I have found myself in the middle of so many clients with cancer lately. It is mind-numbing.
This morning, I was in the sauna right before you got here on the phone with my CFO and my attorney.

Speaker 2 And my attorney, at the end of the call, said, hey, do you have an extra few minutes? I got something personal I want to talk to you about.

Speaker 2 And he says, listen, I have a very good friend just diagnosed with stage four metastatic metastatic colon cancer. It's in the, you know, the liver and the lymph.

Speaker 2 And he's already got a colostomy bag, you know, the day that he found out. Um, last night, I flew in from Scottsdale because my best friend of 35 years is in the Mayo Clinic

Speaker 2 oncology center. He's in the ICU now.
Um,

Speaker 2 35 years, he's been my best friend. We were lifeguards when we were 19 years old.

Speaker 2 Um, stage four metastatic colon cancer, and it spread to all of the lethal three L's, the lymph, the liver, and the lungs.

Speaker 2 And I was in the room and, you know, around his mom, my wife Sage was there, you know, when Mayo came in and said the hard things to him. And

Speaker 2 they, they, this is not even 24 hours old, but basically

Speaker 2 10-year survival, zero. Um, five-year survival, 2%.

Speaker 2 Um, right now we're, we're talking about prolonging your life, not saving your life. Um, massive chemotherapy, radiation,

Speaker 2 colonectomy, colostomy bag,

Speaker 2 you know, the whole nine yards. And so I went out to provide him an alternative.
And I said,

Speaker 2 first of all, it's good that you're hearing this from Mayo. And Mayo's done, for the record, an excellent job of keeping him alive.
He was septic, you know,

Speaker 2 would have died if it was not.

Speaker 1 Times and places for conventional intervention.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. But what was astounding, my wife did a post about this.

Speaker 2 She tagged the Mayo Clinic because when we walked in there, he's in the ICU for cancer treatment. And

Speaker 2 he had jello with red dye 40 in it, like sugar-free jello,

Speaker 2 Seagram soda, which was, you know, I spun the can around. I'm like 54 grams of sugar and pureed applesauce.

Speaker 2 And that was poison. Choices of what to eat.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so.

Speaker 2 I've now got him with a naturopathic oncologist, an interventional radiologist,

Speaker 2 a full-blown medical oncologist. I'm surrounding him with an entire team.
I have a

Speaker 2 cancer chef, basically, a clean keto chef. Then we're going to migrate him to really

Speaker 2 nutrient-dense microgreens. I'm shipping him a red life therapy bed.
He's going into hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Speaker 2 He's going to do methylene blue. He's going to do regular EBO2 ozone.
Eboo. Yeah.
Yeah, the Eboo ozone.

Speaker 2 And he's going to do high-dose vitamin C. And I've got his permission to allow me to share his story in real time.

Speaker 2 And my intention is to be a part of the team that saves his life over the next six to 10 months. And we're just going to bring everybody along on this story.

Speaker 2 And I have a community called the VIP, Ultimate Humans.

Speaker 2 And what I've decided that I'm going to do is be really vulnerable and transparent with this community and take people from my own community that had mold, mycotoxins, metals, parasites, pathogens, viruses.

Speaker 2 And we're going to bring them up on stage. I'm going to match them with a functional practitioner, including, you know, and then I'll be a part of the case, not making medical decisions.

Speaker 2 And we are going to start telling the stories of the miracle of the human body in real time to give people hope. And that's why I need that.
Interested in your story.

Speaker 2 And that's, and that's why I also love the, a lot of the practical information that you put out that goes viral, just what I call lateral shifts where you show food choices and things like that.

Speaker 2 So I don't mean to interrupt your story with my own personal story, but it is just astounding to me how often, you know, this is happening.

Speaker 2 You know, a very close relative of Dana White's, you know, I finished Dana White's

Speaker 2 journey and,

Speaker 2 you know, he called me and said they're diagnosed stage four colon cancer. It's metastatic.
She is, by the way, cancer-free now, five weeks later with non-conventional therapies.

Speaker 2 And so to give the people that are listening listening to this hope, because everybody knows somebody with cancer.

Speaker 1 Oh, for sure. And it's only increasing.
Sadly.

Speaker 2 It's one in five.

Speaker 2 It's one in five now. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 It's mind-numbing to me

Speaker 2 that 50% of us are going to develop cancer at some point in our lifetime. And I think

Speaker 2 when you boil it down to its simplest form.

Speaker 2 right and say what is cancer so first of all it's not something that happens to us it's something that happens within us um all cancer is a healthy cell that became metabolically sick right So why do we believe that healthy cells can become metabolically sick, but we don't believe that metabolically sick cells can become healthy, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So can you give me a little more detail about what you did on this journey? And then I want to get to what you're doing right now. Yeah.
I mean, if you're okay with that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, everything's fair game. But I will also say, I love what you spoke to, too, before I get into some of the practical.
I think mindset is so huge.

Speaker 1 And I think so many people hear the word cancer and it's a death sentence, you know? And I see, like, I see it so clearly. A doctor speaks this over you.
You look up on Google.

Speaker 1 You feel like your days are numbered. You start believing that.
You start doing treatment. You lose your hair.
Then you identify as a cancer patient. You know, and it's, it's this spiral.

Speaker 1 And so I will also say mindset is everything. No man knows the number of your days.

Speaker 1 I mean, you're pretty good at statistics and prognosis, life expectancy, but who says you can't change those modifiable risk factors? Modifiable risk factors. Yes.

Speaker 1 And so I also think mindset is so huge. Like.
I am doing so many things to prevent cancer from coming back because I am cancer free, but my mindset, I live life like I'm healed too.

Speaker 1 I can't tell my body I'm sick all the time. And I don't say my cancer diagnosis because that comes a part of my identity.

Speaker 1 I say the cancer, something that affected me that God's used and it has a purpose, but I don't take it on as my identity. And so I think, but mindset is important.

Speaker 1 You know, I've had doctors speak over me how long I'm going to live.

Speaker 1 And quite frankly, I'm not a statistic and I'm not your average American that's eating your average American diet doing the average American treatments.

Speaker 1 I am being proactive. When you mention ketosis, I think that is the way to go to get into a metabolic therapeutic state for ketosis because cancer loves sugar.

Speaker 1 So we have to cut off its food source first and foremost. And then we also have to look at, and what getting into your question of what I did is what could have stressed the immune system?

Speaker 1 Because at any given point in time, we all have circulating tumor cells.

Speaker 1 But the way it got our body is that our immune system, when it's working and strong, it will go take care of those circulating tumor cells.

Speaker 1 However, when your immune system is suppressed, that's when cancer cells proliferate, go rogue, and a full tumor forms. And so people always kind of freak out when they're.

Speaker 2 I would say like the circulating tumor cells is like stage zero. Yeah.
You know,

Speaker 2 because, you know, even stage one right now is, you know, when we say we have stage one, two, three, four, you know, even stage one right now is, that's where it's already set up as a disease. Right.

Speaker 2 Right. I mean, that's where the thief has already broken into your house and taken all your stuff.
Right. Um, it'd be nice to, to, you know, arrest them before they've done any damage.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right, be proactive, not reactive.

Speaker 1 Like, oh, shoot, it's here. It's like, so everything you're doing is proactive, right? Like, don't wait until you get a diagnosis.

Speaker 1 And I think people always hear my story and they kind of freak out a little bit because they're like, wait, you're this health and wellness person that we follow and you have this whole brand and you got cancer.

Speaker 1 But what I always like to remind people, especially you can't live in fear, you know, like we do have to be more proactive with how toxic our society and environment is.

Speaker 1 So we can't just like be flippant about how we live our life. We have to be super mindful and conscious of all the lifestyle choices and diet and things that we do.
But I think.

Speaker 1 For me, like I was really sick and people forget that. And so when I was sick and got into functional medicine, that's when the tumor started growing.
Yes.

Speaker 1 So when you look back on my timeline, all these oncologists and all these traditional traditional doctors and neurosurgeons were saying, well, it's probably been growing eight to 10 years.

Speaker 1 And it dawned on me, I'm like, that's when I was sick. So it's crazy to look back on the timeline.

Speaker 2 You probably saved your own life without realizing it.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's crazy.

Speaker 2 At least slowed its growth and progression. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, so more specifically, you, when you said I did red light, you died in full-body red light therapy multiple days a week. Um, were you doing like high-dose vitamin CIV? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Did you put yourself into ketosis?

Speaker 1 I did. And I was like, I knew a lot about nutrition.
And that's the hard thing for me. I was already really healthy.
So to feel like I had to take it up a notch was like, whoa. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What does this look like? But I treated healing like a job for a period of time, especially during those five months before brain surgery. And I was like, you know what?

Speaker 1 It'd be so cool if we could shrink this brain tumor. But if anything, I'm just preparing my body to be strong going into a brain surgery.
Right. And so for me, I did high dose vitamin C.

Speaker 1 I had to work my way up to root like 75 grams.

Speaker 2 Yep. And started like 25 grams.

Speaker 1 Yep. And then worked our way up.
I did methylene blue infusions. I did methylene blue before doing a red light helmet, like 30 minutes before I activated.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I did oral.

Speaker 1 So I'd do like my methylene blue drops. 30 minutes later, I'd put on my red light helmet.
Great. I did molecular helmets.
You had a neuronic helmet?

Speaker 2 Is it from Weaver?

Speaker 2 Weber is from Germany. Okay, great.

Speaker 1 So I did that. So you and I were offline talking about therapy stacking because you got to to be efficient.
You know, you can't just all day do everything.

Speaker 1 So I would sit at my desk. I'd check emails.
I'd do my methylene blue. I'd put on my red light helmet.
I'd do my my molecular hydrogen, oxygen. I have a hyperbaric chamber.
You know,

Speaker 2 like a soft chamber. I do.

Speaker 1 I have a soft chamber. I've gotten so claustrophobic, though, so I haven't used it as much.
But I had to.

Speaker 2 You have to get one of mine. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Seriously, I sat in there earlier and I could do that. Yeah.
But yeah, I did everything that you can imagine. Got into ketosis.

Speaker 1 I was checking not just ketones, but GKI, glucose ketone index, pricking my finger. I mean, it was, I did everything.
I was taking

Speaker 1 so many supplements.

Speaker 2 CGMs.

Speaker 1 I did CGMs. Yeah.
Okay. And then I,

Speaker 1 yeah, I'm just thinking, like, what else did I do? I did, I mean, a lot of separate nervous system and stress.

Speaker 2 And diet-wise, when you put yourself into ketosis, so because I always remind people there's dirty keto diets, there's clean keto diets, just like there's dirty vegetarian diets, right?

Speaker 2 Vegetarians can have, you know, processed plant burgers,

Speaker 2 you know, Doritos, pasta, mac and cheese.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, there's dirty vegetarian diets, like there's dirty keto diets. When you were putting yourself in ketosis, what kind of, what kind of fats were you using?

Speaker 1 so really high quality fats and that's when people and i actually had a hard time in ketosis because i was doing lower carb but i was doing too much protein right so i realized i had to do a lot more healthy fat so i was doing olive oil shots avocado macadamia nuts and i really had to up my fat like it was i had to consciously make an effort it's hard to get 75 of your caloric intake from fat which is really a keto diet most people think the keto diet is a high protein low carb diet that's not they think it's like cottage cheese and t-bone steaks right right right and i mean and you can have a ribeye steak on there but right but fatty ribeye, but you also, you're right, you need to have it's more moderate protein,

Speaker 1 it's more high-quality protein.

Speaker 1 That's another big thing, like wild-caught fish, grass-fed meat. And then I would do, you know, greens, like really low-carb vegetables.

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Speaker 2 Where do you fall on the cleansing bandwagon? Because I feel like, you know, again, just going back to the root of all cancer, which is a metabolically healthy cell becomes metabolically sick.

Speaker 2 Even though we rarely know exactly what caused it. I mean, if you had a massive

Speaker 2 poison exposure or a massive amount of radiation or something, we can can usually pinpoint what caused it. But that's very, very rare.
Most people, their cancer diagnosis of

Speaker 2 idiopathic, it's of unknown origin. But the more I get down the rabbit hole of parasites, mold, mycotoxin, metals, and viruses, the more I realize a lot of these have a common origin.

Speaker 2 That's like the hub of the wheel. If you could just eliminate those four things or address those four things, right? Mold, mycotoxin, virus, metals,

Speaker 2 then,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 you're probably getting to the root of what wore your immune system out in the first place and allowed that circulating tumor cell to slip by. So you said you did a parasitic cleanse as well.

Speaker 2 So how did you, first of all, did you test for parasites?

Speaker 1 I did. And for me, you know, I was living abroad, so it made a lot of sense.
And another thing, and I will say drops in the bucket, it was the perfect storm for me.

Speaker 1 You know, the parasites was a huge contributing factor. I tested positive for parasites in stool.
I actually, this is crazy.

Speaker 1 And for anyone listening that thinks parasites are woo-woo and they're like, yeah, but we don't live in a third world country. Absolutely.
No, no, we do worm our pets. Like you can have exposure.

Speaker 1 And so one thing that I have to say specifically about parasites is: so when I got diagnosed, I did all the lab testing you can ever imagine on myself, you know, because I had practitioners, but I'm like, I'm going to cast the net.

Speaker 1 What are we missing here?

Speaker 1 And I actually found I was blood positive, serum positive for a parasite called Toxoplasma Gandhi that the International Journal of Cancer and the American Cancer Society link to brain tumors and middle-aged people.

Speaker 1 No way. Yes.
And so.

Speaker 2 Just because of the outgassing of these?

Speaker 1 You know, it suppresses the immune system. So parasites, we want to talk parasites, they suppress the immune system.

Speaker 1 And so, again, with cancer, we want to do anything to boost our immune system and decrease inflammation, boost immunity. And so parasites suppress the immune system because they're a foreign invader.

Speaker 1 You know, and so for me, I did ivermectin. I did all sorts of mabindazol, fabindazole.
I even did a linea. I did all sorts of, I actually did pharmaceuticals.

Speaker 1 I think there are times and places for it.

Speaker 2 Celcyclovir or something.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Antivirals.
But for me specifically, I, so I did that, but then I also have done a lot of herbs. And so, you know, you can just do quarterly, like my kids.
I'm like, all right, kids, it's April.

Speaker 1 We're deworming.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And so it's, it's really the idea is like not over cleansing.

Speaker 1 Cause to be honest, even in the functional medicine world, I thought it was a little overkill because I would test people for parasites. And they're really hard to detect on testing.

Speaker 1 But I've really done frequency scans. I've done stool tests, blood tests, and it is consistently possible.

Speaker 2 The frequency scans can pick it up. I find that those are actually very good.

Speaker 2 Very good at picking those up,

Speaker 2 which is why I'm also a believer in frequency to

Speaker 2 address them.

Speaker 2 Like

Speaker 2 that HOCAP machine that we have is transdermal ozone, but it also has a Rife frequency in it.

Speaker 1 I've done a lot of Rife.

Speaker 2 Have you done a lot of Rife too? A lot. It's so good because I think

Speaker 2 you can empower people as well because, you know, so

Speaker 2 I sat and had the conversation with my friend

Speaker 2 this weekend with my wife,

Speaker 2 his mother, and

Speaker 2 he's in the bed in the ICU. We're hoping he's going to get discharged in the next few days.

Speaker 2 And I said, you know, we're going to come at this very differently. We have a team that's going to address your cancer.
There's an interventional radiologist.

Speaker 2 There's a naturopathic oncologist, and there's an oncologist.

Speaker 2 And these people are qualified to practice that medicine. But then we have another team that's just caring for the host.
just caring for you.

Speaker 2 Who's making your meals?

Speaker 2 What are you eating? What are you laying in?

Speaker 2 We need to start thinking about being in service to the body and that everything that's going to enter your body from now on has got to be in service to you. The water you drink has to be intentional.

Speaker 2 The air you breathe has to be intentional, meaning let's filter the air and make sure that we're not getting mold spores or getting

Speaker 2 pet dander or things.

Speaker 2 The bed you're sleeping in,

Speaker 2 the modalities that you're going to use,

Speaker 2 all of these things are caring for the host.

Speaker 2 Because I don't think there's any law that says you have to be sick and emaciated and lose your hair and be sarcopenic and all of these things when you're going through cancer treatment.

Speaker 2 You know, the majority of the clients of mine that have gone through that, the journey was not that horrific for them.

Speaker 1 Because you can do a lot of things to support your journey along the way.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you can do a lot of things. So were you doing anything to, I mean, obviously you're conscious of your diet.

Speaker 2 And before your surgery, did the tumor actually shrink?

Speaker 1 It did. Yes.
It was a miracle. That is so amazing.

Speaker 1 Which is insane.

Speaker 2 Yes, yes because when i got the radiology reports that is incredible i mean first of all was your like neurologist like what in the

Speaker 1 so i actually have the coolest neurosurgeon he's actually in i flew to arizona for my brain surgery he's at barrows neurological chris smith if anyone needs a recommendation and he believes in ketosis

Speaker 2 uh-huh i was literally just there yeah so he

Speaker 1 he operates in scottsdale and in phoenix and we stayed in scottsdale for me to recover but he believes in metabolic ketosis you know he doesn't have the time to talk about all these things that stress the immune system because he's saving lives and doing brain surgery but yeah i mean he's all in and he's like, he's the one that told me I don't want you doing because mine was stage three.

Speaker 1 So it was stage four is the most aggressive. So it wasn't like this, you know, little tiny growing thing.
It was a beast that we needed to get out of there. So I'm grateful.

Speaker 1 And that's what I also want people to hear me say. I think it's easy to hear all the stuff that we talk about and think that it's all holistic.
And I always say.

Speaker 1 I like saying integrative because you take the best of the conventional, the best of the holistic, and you integrate the two for the best possible outcome.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I agree. I mean, just changing your diet alone is not going to save your life.
You need to do that. Right.

Speaker 1 And there are times and places for acute care. You know, let's get someone out of the acute flare of ulcerative colitis.

Speaker 1 And you sometimes have to get the steroids and get the iron infusion, but then you have to figure out what caused the inflammation and caused the immune system to go rogue, not just with cancer, with anything, autoimmune disease.

Speaker 1 And so, um, everyone was shocked, and it was truly a miracle. But I'm so glad I still did surgery to get the remainder out.
And so, I have a huge hole in my brain. I'm still normal.

Speaker 1 You wouldn't know, right?

Speaker 2 I didn't even like when I first saw you, I'm like, dude, this chick's got a hole in her brain for sure. No, I'm just,

Speaker 2 no, not at all.

Speaker 1 Well, and even people that knew me you know they're like you're still the same tailor even 24 hours i mean the whole thing's a miracle yeah and i didn't have any deficits and i was walking six hours after brain surgery i was like giving them orders i'm like get this catheter out i'm ready to get up and get ambulating you are wow and then i was i went home straight from icu 24 hours after surgery and so i really think everything i did to

Speaker 2 do the temporal side right here i have a huge

Speaker 1 huge scar right here well yeah

Speaker 1 so nobody sees it yeah um and so he's the one that said you know traditional oncology, and that's something else, you know, when people are like, oh my gosh, but you did integrative stuff with cancer, isn't cancer scary?

Speaker 1 And for me, I'm like, well, no, because traditional only offers chemo, surgery, and radiation. And the integrative side offers all these other therapies and diet.

Speaker 1 And as a mom that wants to see her kids live a long life, like, why wouldn't I do anything and everything? And so for me. I didn't just do what traditional offered me.
I did all the other things too.

Speaker 1 But instead of doing chemo and radiation, that's where I'm still doing things to prevent recurrence. And my neurosurgeon said, like, I want you to get into ketosis.

Speaker 1 I want you to keep focusing on everything you're doing with your immune system.

Speaker 2 So no chemo, no radiation. And now post-surgery images are good.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I just had a scan three weeks ago.

Speaker 2 And he got, I mean, was it encapsulated? How did he get clean margins?

Speaker 1 So he just probably took a little bit more around. And I love that you're asking that question.

Speaker 1 You're so educated because most people think that a brain tumor is sitting on top of your brain, but it really, it infiltrates the brain tissue.

Speaker 2 And so it was brain tissue.

Speaker 1 Yes. And so it was healthy brain tissue.
And so it was the right side of my brain. I was spared any symptoms.
I definitely struggled with sensory overload after brain surgery.

Speaker 1 So that's where I like, I have my higher dose mat and, you know, I'd have to take a brain surgery. I saw that.
And that thing saved my life after brain surgery.

Speaker 1 I mean, I would just, I would need to go low sensory. I'd go lay in my closet and just lay on that.
And it was so calming. Really? But yeah, I didn't have any deficits.
You know what was crazy?

Speaker 2 I put it on the sleep setting the other day.

Speaker 2 They sent me one to evaluate. And I was, I was watching the Super Bowl.
Yeah. And so I just was like, you know what? I might as well give this thing a whirl right now.

Speaker 2 Set, I said like for the for the sleep setting. And I woke up in the the middle of the third quarter.
It was a good game to miss anyway. Cause it wasn't really

Speaker 1 much this year.

Speaker 2 The Eagles. And I won my bet because I had the Eagles had to score 24 points.
So, so thank you, Higher Dose, because I passed out and woke up. And I was like, no, it's a game changer.

Speaker 1 And that's the one thing that would help me. If I'd have a restless night, I struggled with insomnia.
That was really hard. And I did have Lyme disease.
And so I'm working on that right now.

Speaker 1 But the Lyme was re-triggered and activated with the brain surgery. And so like, talk about nervous system dysregulation.
So I didn't have any deficits after surgery.

Speaker 2 Like Lyme is another difficult one. And it's a big, I am convinced that it has to be coming from potentially other sources than a tick.
For sure. And the reason why I believe that is

Speaker 2 I've also seen so many clients that have had chronic Lyme. And then because of its capacity to retreat into the dorsal root ganglion, hide, not be active,

Speaker 2 you know, not have a viral load that's high enough for you to trigger an IgM response. So, excuse me.
So when you do Lyme testing very often, it's like, oh, it's in remission.

Speaker 2 It's like, oh, you also had mono in eighth grade and that's in remission and you don't have a seam bar. But, um, but Lyme is really

Speaker 1 reactivated. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think it almost doesn't behave like a typical virus.

Speaker 1 It's a spirochete, so it like burrows in tissues. And I honestly, I was hospitalized for a tick by years and years ago, but the body is also amazing.
You know, like we can keep these things at bay.

Speaker 1 And yeah, just because you have chickenpox as a kid doesn't mean you're going to get shingles. You know, like there's a lot we can do to support our immune system.

Speaker 2 Always become EBV, but when you you see people with repeated EBV flare.

Speaker 1 There's something going on. Yeah, there's something going on.
And also stress. Yeah.
That can trigger a lot of people. Don't give stress enough credit for the havoc that it can wreak on our hearts.

Speaker 2 I totally agree with you. And I think that, you know, one, in my opinion, one of the greatest

Speaker 2 sort of theories or philosophical approaches to aging now that's emerging is, is this whole concept of immunofatigue.

Speaker 2 And, you know, when the immune system gets busy on too many fronts, right? Because most people think it's just protecting us from

Speaker 2 pathogens, which it is, right i mean it's it's you get influenza it's going to mount an immune response but the majority of the immune system's role is to police ourself right the circulating tumor cells like you're talking about senescent cells and yes protect us and and and to protect us and also police the parts of us that are not working right and so when you when it's when it's fighting on too many fronts and you know it gets run down and you know stress is one of those things that i love that bucket analogy of you know it just puts a few more things in the bucket and pretty soon

Speaker 2 it overflows.

Speaker 2 But it's never just the one thing. No.
Right.

Speaker 2 So when you say, I love it when, when,

Speaker 2 uh, you know, you go to your doctor and they're like, well, you got to reduce your stress. And it's like, well, what, what does that look like?

Speaker 2 get divorced, not talk to my kids and quit my job. Cause

Speaker 2 those are the three things that stress me out of my marriage, my kids, and my job. So, um,

Speaker 2 and I mean that tongue-in-cheek, guys. Um,

Speaker 2 but so talk about some of the stress-reducing techniques that you did. You need a pulse electromagnetic field.
Yeah. Did you do any kind of like biofeedback or?

Speaker 1 I did. I did biofeedback.
Again, I had had some trauma in my life. So I did some EMDR for that.

Speaker 2 That's really good.

Speaker 1 And yeah, some emotional release stuff. And I think also the thing is, I think we've normalized stress, our society.
Everybody's overcommitted and busy and stress. We've normalized it.

Speaker 2 We've glorified it. Yes.
Like take the hill, sleep is for losers.

Speaker 1 Yes. Like do more, be more, hustle hard.
Yeah, yeah. Otherwise you fail.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And talk about the nervous system, like being in the parasympathetic state, which is the rest and digest and calm is like hardly ever.

Speaker 1 And so really practical stuff, like deep breathing, you know, my infrared sauna is super calming for me.

Speaker 1 For me, prayer, you know, having quiet time, journaling,

Speaker 1 grounding, time outside. A lot of these things are free when it comes to stress relief, an Epsom salt bath.

Speaker 1 But for me, also practically, you know, I was hustling. I was a mom of a 10-month-old, a three-year-old.
I owned a private practice. I had a wellness center.

Speaker 1 And so for me, I had to stop and reevaluate every commitment in my life. What matters and what really mattered to me is being the mom that I've always wanted to be.

Speaker 1 And that meant not just for here and now, but long term. I think we're so focused on here and now and what can I get done? But I'm like, I want to be there for those milestones.

Speaker 1 So what do I need to step away from? And so I ended up closing down my private practice. I had thousands of people on the wait list.
It was thriving.

Speaker 1 I had multiple practitioners, but if I can't help myself and take care of myself, what's the point of helping everyone else?

Speaker 2 God bless you for that.

Speaker 1 That is, it was hard. But then I also stepped away from the wellness center, you know, and I just really had to just restructure my life.

Speaker 1 So practically, I had had to get stuff off my plate that I don't want to say it no longer served me. I mean, it was amazing.
It gave me so much purpose.

Speaker 1 I worked so hard to be in that place, but they were stressors at the end of the day that pulled me away from my healing and my family.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And so you really just focused on your healing journey.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
And, but, you know, the practical stuff, like getting my sunshine and fresh air, that's free. Grounding, putting my feet in the grass for 10 minutes.

Speaker 2 Every, every morning.

Speaker 1 Taking an Epsom salt bath. You know, it's the simple stuff that people forget about.

Speaker 2 I totally agree with you.

Speaker 2 You know, it's, you know, I got lots of fancy equipment in my, in my unit, but I always tell people: listen, you don't have to, you don't have to spend 100 grand on a, on a red light bed.

Speaker 2 Just take your shirt off, expose your skin to sunlight. You know, let sunlight get into your eyes.
Let it, let it be your circadian rhythm.

Speaker 2 You know, you can, you can force the reset of these things with tranquiltics like sleep pennication.

Speaker 2 Um, but because we regulate our lighting and we regulate our temperature and, you know, we can make it the surface of the sun at one o'clock in the morning if we want.

Speaker 2 You know, that's not ancestrally like how, how our body was designed. It wasn't designed to be in sync with fluorescent lighting.
It was designed to be in sync with the rise and and fall of the sun.

Speaker 2 Right. And

Speaker 2 very often, I have a client too that was suffering from very, very severe tinnitus. Tinnitus so severe that he was really on a regular basis contemplating taking his own life.
And

Speaker 2 one of the things that we did for him when he had him actually come here and move in with me for a short period of time was just the simple things.

Speaker 2 I forced him to go to bed at the same time each night and wake up at the same time each morning.

Speaker 2 My wife and daughter actually took shifts sleeping in his room here, the house, because we're, you know,

Speaker 2 concerned about him. And

Speaker 2 just that consistency of like sunlight in the morning, grounding in the morning, breath, breath work, dimming the lights at night, red light in the room in the evenings, just over several weeks starts to tell the body, this is when we wake up.

Speaker 2 This is when we go to bed. This is when we wake up.
Some sense of normalcy. I think we're, we're such circadian creatures that we crave that routine.
Right.

Speaker 1 And getting back to basics, we overcomplicate it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And so you also talk a lot about gut health.

Speaker 2 And I think

Speaker 2 when we talk about gut health, I mean, obviously, I think the majority of us would agree gut's important. But why is it important? And how do we care for it? And for people that have had

Speaker 2 lifelong gut disruption, like, where's a place for them to start?

Speaker 1 Yeah. So the gut really is the gateway to health and it does not get enough attention.
It truly is.

Speaker 1 I have seen in practice over the years, once the gut is healed, so many other things fall into place. You know, we chase skin issues, we chase hormonal issues.

Speaker 1 And it's like, if you really fix the gut, so many of these other things are secondary.

Speaker 1 And so I think obviously eating a clean diet, focusing on whole foods, getting away from all the process, the seed oils, the sugar, that's a very practical place to start.

Speaker 1 Managing stress, that's huge. You know, the gut brain access is so important.
A lot of our neurotransmitters are made in our gut. It's a second brain.

Speaker 1 And so obviously the things, you know, managing stress, sleeping, eating healthy, drinking clean water.

Speaker 1 But if people have all of those things down, I usually find it's helpful to do stool testing because usually there's either

Speaker 1 a good old poop test because it is.

Speaker 1 It's once you identify the bacteria, you know, some people you could guess and try certain gut healing supplements and digestive enzymes, but I find I'm a really big fan of test don't guess when you don't know what's going on.

Speaker 2 I'm a huge fan of test donuts.

Speaker 1 Yes. And so is it dysbiosis? Is there imbalanced bacteria that needs to be treated? Is it a lack of a certain strain? You know, do you need pancreatic enzymes? Maybe it's parasites.

Speaker 1 So once you can address kind of those imbalances, I find that's really helpful.

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Yeah, we did this.

Speaker 2 I did a three-day gut challenge. It was super, super simple.
We just

Speaker 2 meals that were like heavy in

Speaker 2 fermented vegetables. And so we did three days of meals with all these folks.
And we did, you know, clean water and

Speaker 2 some supplementation, basic supplementation, pre-pro and post-biotics and some gut supplements that were relatively basic.

Speaker 2 Of all the challenges I've ever had, like of, you know, the water fasting challenges, 10,000 step, gold plunge, of all the challenges I've ever had, we, we not only had the most number of participants, but it was the most overwhelming amount of inbound communication from people about how it changed their life.

Speaker 1 Amazing.

Speaker 2 They're like, oh my God, my, my, and it was relatively simple.

Speaker 2 I'm not talking about demonstrative changes in people's lives, but like people telling us about how their skin cleared up, how they started sleeping, how ringing went away in their ears, how they stopped bloating.

Speaker 2 They went in and their hormones were balanced on their next test. And it is just astounding to me the

Speaker 2 amount of gateways that leave the gut and lead to other chronic symptoms that are presenting themselves as disease, pathology, dysfunction, you know, when we get back to the basics and start fixing the gut.

Speaker 2 So, so what are some things that people, what do you, I mean, I know, I know you have a supplement line and you have your

Speaker 2 TW wellness. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
So or TD wellness.

Speaker 1 We have an online community, but then we also have like supplements and electrolytes and protein. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
So, I mean, I want to talk about like your online community and, you know, some of the supplements, like how, how did you derive them?

Speaker 2 I also love the fact that you're a mom and a lot and you you're very transparent about what you do with your kids when they're sick what you do with your kids when they're stressed when they can't sleep and so for for really active moms that don't have a functional medicine background yeah um where do they start with their kids um

Speaker 2 diet supplementation um these sorts of things what are some practical steps that every mom should be taking to just elevate the the welfare i think that's such a good question and it really does it starts with moms for our next generation and i feel like a lot of people trying to get into this world, there's so much information.

Speaker 1 You get inundated and overwhelmed.

Speaker 1 And so I just say silence the noise, find a few good people that you trust, you know, listen to them, learn from them, but also don't feel like because you can't do this big radical change that you're never going to be able to do anything.

Speaker 1 So again, it's starting with the basics, you know, they're little people too. Like get them out in sunshine and fresh air.
You know, a lot of moms are so overwhelmed.

Speaker 1 They can't find time for themselves, let alone their kids. And so I'm like, come on, kids, we're going outside.
We're grounding. My kids, they call it barefooting.
Yeah, yeah, barefooting.

Speaker 1 You know, so bring them along with you.

Speaker 2 Have them drink a little bit. What's so crazy is that's how I grew up.

Speaker 2 You know, I actually saw someone talking about it on Instagram this morning when I was in my red light bed, and it freaked me out because I am the last generation that's going to

Speaker 2 grow up knowing what it's not like to be connected. Right.
Right. So we didn't have an iPhone.
We didn't have the internet.

Speaker 2 You know, we didn't have iPads.

Speaker 2 And when I think of like all this stuff, they're like, yeah, I got my kids to take their shoes off and touch the surface of the earth. We went out and grounded this this morning.

Speaker 2 Like, shoot, I grounded it. I grounded like nine hours a day.

Speaker 1 I went to the creek and paid. Like, I came home when the sun was going down.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was like, I didn't start wearing clothes till I was like nine, you know, like, because I grew up on a farm. And, um, uh, so you, you, you actually bring the kids along on this journey.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 So they can. And I would say, just like moms, like, we have the power to feed our children.
You know, they don't know what things are and it's never too late to start.

Speaker 1 So clean up the snacks in the pantry. Get rid of inflammatory oils.
Get rid of the sugar. Hard and fast rule in our family.
We can budge when we go to birthday parties.

Speaker 1 You know, our kids, we're here enjoying Miami. We had a little, you know, sorbet at dinner last night.
That's a truth for them. Hard and fast rule.
We do no food dyes in our home and our kids know it.

Speaker 1 And it's, it's one of those things. Food dyes.
Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2 So we don't do food dyes.

Speaker 1 I've actually seen some.

Speaker 2 I mean, by the way, I mean, I'm going to give the whole audience, I'll tell you how to get in touch with Taylor and find her on social media at the end of the podcast.

Speaker 2 But one of the things I love that she does, and I do some of these too, but not as well as she does, is she shows you these lateral shifts. The swaps.
Yeah, the swaps.

Speaker 2 I call them lateral shifts, but the swaps, you know, like Oreos for this, you know, um, crackers for this, Doritos for this. And she gives you practical brands.

Speaker 2 I actually did a little research and sleuthing around, and the majority of her swaps are, are dollar cost neutral, um, like or very slight increases in costs.

Speaker 2 Like it's not like you're going from a $2 option to a $15 option, going from a $2 option to a $2.50

Speaker 2 option, which was really cool. And I was deeply appreciative of that because I think a lot of times there's just not good practical information on, all right, listen, I'm a a busy mom.

Speaker 2 I got to walk into the grocery store. Just tell me what to do.

Speaker 2 Um, and I love that. So, um, I was actually even looking at the MM swap and

Speaker 2 the one that I looked up, the one that you swapped.

Speaker 1 Probably Unreal snacks.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, Unreal. And they're good, too.
Dang, they actually are free, uh, they're actually colored with like beech and spirulina and spirulina and like um blueberry.

Speaker 2 And one was like grapeseed peel. And I was like, this is amazing.
I didn't know candies could do this. But a lot of countries have outlawed it.

Speaker 1 And so it's like, this is the one thing. And my kids know, like my sons play baseball and they're like, yeah, we don't drink Gatorade.
We just drink mom's electrolytes. And they're cool with it.

Speaker 1 You know?

Speaker 2 And by the way, they're great. And what are your electrolytes made from?

Speaker 1 They are made from organic coconut water. And then we, of course, do sodium, potassium, and magnesium.

Speaker 2 So is it, is it a liquid or is it a

Speaker 1 powder you like you put into like a water bottle just like we would shake it up but one thing for me too is when we were formulating these i was like how how do we want to set ours apart and so i love love a lot of brands out there.

Speaker 1 There are a lot of great brands on the market, but for us personally, I didn't want a bunch of natural flavors, a bunch of chemicals. So we flavor ours with organic fruit juice powder.

Speaker 1 So like for our strawberry lemonade, it's organic strawberry powder and then some lemon extract. And then you get the pretty red color, you know, no food dyes,

Speaker 1 not even beet juice to enhance it. It's just pretty.

Speaker 1 Like the guava grapefruit is derived from, you know, the citrus of the grapefruit and the guava fruit. And so, and it's no sugar.

Speaker 1 I think there might be one gram of sugar in the strawberry lemonade just because the strawberry.

Speaker 1 But yeah, so we formulated it of just like we wanted to just be super clean, no chemicals, just flavors from, you know, the things that are here on earth.

Speaker 2 Right. That's so,

Speaker 1 but my kids are cool with it. They know, like, and we try to educate them.

Speaker 1 We don't try to shame, you know, they had donuts, they've gone to birthday parties, they live their lives, but they know that we make healthier decisions. And, and we don't view it as a control thing.

Speaker 1 We really try to educate them. Like, we don't have food diets because they're not good for us in our brains.
And we want to be strong and healthy.

Speaker 1 And so our kids from a young age, like you could ask my kid, you know, do you drink Gator? And he's like, no, sir. They have food diets in them.
Really?

Speaker 2 yeah i found that that's so awesome

Speaker 2 i should throw them on the podcast i i had my nieces on the podcast a few

Speaker 1 i haven't listened but i saw clips and i'm like

Speaker 2 and it went crazy viral and my for a while my team was like i don't know if this is on brand i'm like no this is great let's let's throw it out there and malia wanted to do it i'll give malia credit i love it

Speaker 2 and um and they were they were just so uh attentive and alert and and and engaged i mean even i was sitting there interviewing them like you guys are really smart.

Speaker 2 And, and, but they talked about like from a kid's perspective.

Speaker 2 And if you're, if you're a mom or dad and you've got young kids and, and you, you want them to be educated like her kids or like my brother and sister-in-laws, watch that podcast because they feel super empowered.

Speaker 2 Yes. And they were really happy about it.

Speaker 1 They're passionate about it. Yeah, they're passionate about it.

Speaker 2 And she's like, you know, they bring their

Speaker 2 grapes in their, you know, their own little

Speaker 2 snack bags.

Speaker 2 And when the candies and cookies and pastries and pies and brownies and all are being passed around, they're having their own snacks and and they're fine with it yeah and it's it's kind of like they're they're their individuality you know and and um and it doesn't they don't feel like they're missing out and other kids don't tease them they actually feel like you know i'm i'm an individual this is my thing that i do and what's really interesting is they even talked about how um their friends get really curious well why don't my parents have me do that i want to do that too and and so it has kind of the opposite effect there's a shift of what i i thought you know um

Speaker 2 and there's a replacement for all of these things. You can take Doritos and have masa chips.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we do homemade pizza nights. Like my kids aren't deprived.
And that's where I think that's a power struggle. Like we can't protect our kids forever.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But we can empower them to make healthy choices, especially why they're living with us and to understand why and to see how they feel, you know. And I think sometimes, you know, I have mom friends.

Speaker 1 I'm really blessed. I have a great, healthy community of mom friends.

Speaker 1 So when we have a birthday party, it's like, don't worry, I made the simple meals cake and I did the buttercream frosting homemade, you know, and you're like, thank you.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 But it's also cool to let our kids live.

Speaker 1 And, you you know and sometimes if they have something they're like that hurt my tummy and it's like yeah you know this is why we make healthy choices but i think there's a movement happening too and people want to feel good and they want to boost their kids immune systems and the amount of kids that are you know medicated with adhd and it's like well if i was having fruit loops for breakfast i'd probably have brain fog too and then kids are bouncing off the walls and so we have to think about blood sugar for kids too and setting them up for success and yeah and kids don't know to say like i have brain fog but they'll they'll be hyper you know and so empowering them to see like this is how this is why we do this.

Speaker 1 And so they don't feel like they're being controlled, but they feel empowered, like you said. Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, I think that's, I think that's so important. And I think the best thing that you can do is you can educate your kids

Speaker 2 so that they can be, you know, independent. You give them that independence.

Speaker 2 And, and, you know, like your kids could probably go into a grocery store and figure out what it is that, that, yeah, that they, that they want to eat.

Speaker 2 So, you know, now in your, is your practice active? I mean, are you retired?

Speaker 2 Okay, so you're retired.

Speaker 1 What did I say? I retired, but that's why I started my online community because I have all these people asking.

Speaker 1 And the same thing with the formulating of things, you know, with the protein powder, it's like people are always asking me. So I'm like, well, why don't we just go and kind of create our own?

Speaker 1 And what do I like on the market? And what would I change? And so that's kind of the inspiration for a lot of the things that we're formulating. Like we have a healthy lemonade, no sugar.

Speaker 1 Remember country time lemonade? Yeah, yeah. So we're just doing that healthy.

Speaker 2 Tang. Yes.

Speaker 2 That's how bad my childhood was. Tang was like, that was awful.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So we're just creating healthier products, like a healthy hot chocolate, no sugar. We sweeten it with monk fruit, you know? And so I want my kids to have these normal experiences.

Speaker 1 But anyway, I was, I would be asked about, you know, these products. And that was kind of where the cancer journey was a blessing.
It pivoted me to kind of get creative with my career. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then again, people are always asking, and I don't work with people anymore one-on-one, but we have a community where they get access to functional medicine lab testing.

Speaker 1 I have nurse practitioners that do consults. So we can help people and equip them, but we don't, you know, prescribe or diagnose or anything.
Right.

Speaker 2 No, that's, that's so awesome. Well, um, so tell my community how they can.
find you.

Speaker 1 Well, on Instagram, I like educating. That's like my mission, you know, is just equipping people with information, healthy swaps.

Speaker 1 I've shared my whole cancer journey, and that's just at Taylor Dukes Wellness. And then we have all of our products at shop.

Speaker 2 T-Y-L-O-R.

Speaker 1 T-A-Y-L-O-R. Yep.
Dukes, D-U-K-E-S, wellness.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Wellness.

Speaker 2 On Instagram. And your community, it's a paid community.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's just $39 a month. It's like no strings attached.
Cancel if you want. But it creates, I do live calls, you know, once a month with just them to answer questions.
They get to pick my brain.

Speaker 1 And then it's really beautiful. There's this community of people all over that have connected, like-minded moms.
Usually most of them are moms answering, you know, what'd you do for your kid for this?

Speaker 1 And so it's really neat. We bring on guest experts.
And then, yeah,

Speaker 1 all my products are just at shop.taylordukesmallness.com.

Speaker 2 That's amazing. So

Speaker 2 I wind down all my podcasts by asking my guests the same question. Then we're going to go into my, I have a VIP community too.

Speaker 2 So when the podcast is over, we're going to go into the VIP room and I'll just allow them to ask direct questions because I really believe in building this community because

Speaker 2 I don't think that we can make a real change in the world just by putting out information i think you have to affect the habits of people's lives right i mean if you if if you want to lose weight you have to adopt the habits of somebody who's interested in losing weight right just it's not just enough to have a goal to lose weight and and i want to do something very similar to what you're doing and and that is build a community hundreds of thousands of like-minded highly educated people that can go out and empower other people to make changes in their life and that's that's how we do it i in fact I think the day of the celebrity influencer and the online influencer are over, if not severely numbered.

Speaker 2 If you aren't building a community, I don't agree with that. And service to

Speaker 1 and allowing a place where like-minded people, you know, you can't go and do all these meetups, but you can foster a place. And I love that you do that.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 We do the same thing. And I, and I encourage all of my peers in my.

Speaker 2 you know, and in the industry to do the same thing because people are looking for guidance and, you know, and a like-minded community to spend, spend time with.

Speaker 2 And it's, it's really empowering to do that. So

Speaker 2 here's the question. You ready? Okay, I'm ready.
Let's fire it away.

Speaker 2 What does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

Speaker 1 I think it's a loaded question. And I think it's

Speaker 1 not a simple answer, but I would say if I could break it down, there's the spiritual, the physical, and then kind of the mental emotional.

Speaker 1 So spiritually, for me, that's having a relationship with God. And I'm so thankful that I have that relationship with him and the hope beyond my circumstances going through what I've walked through.

Speaker 1 Like if I didn't have the hope of heaven and I'm facing a cancer diagnosis at 33, that's hard, you know, and that's where my peace comes from and my joy and my hope.

Speaker 1 And so I think spiritually that's going to look different for everybody, but that's for me personally. I think that's so, so important to know your God-given purpose and your gifts.

Speaker 2 Couldn't agree with you more.

Speaker 1 And then physically, of course, everything we've talked about, you know, eating healthy food, sleeping, getting back to the basics. People overcomplicate health.

Speaker 1 And I have all the fancy, not anything like Gary, let's be clear, but I have a bunch of these modalities. And people, what gadget should I buy?

Speaker 1 And I say, we have to get back to the basics when it comes to our physical health. We have to to eat healthy.
We have to move our body. We have to get sleep, manage our stress.

Speaker 1 So there's a lot of things physically we can be doing. And then lastly, I would say just emotionally and mentally, you know, do you have purpose? Community.

Speaker 1 Do you have like-minded people around you cheering you on and being with you in the heart? You know, and then are you managing your stress?

Speaker 1 And are you doing, and this kind of comes back to spiritually too, like, are you doing something that fulfills you, especially if you're working?

Speaker 1 Cause you're spending way too much time during your life working.

Speaker 1 And if you're not doing something that gives you purpose, that you're using your gifts, I feel like mentally and emotionally, you're going to be stressed and empty.

Speaker 2 I totally, totally agree with you. Wow.
Taylor, this has been amazing.

Speaker 2 1,000%. I'm going to have you back on the podcast.
I love following your journey. My community is going to love you.
You're sweet.

Speaker 2 You ready to go into the ultimate human VIP community and take some information?

Speaker 2 Let's go fire it up. And if you're interested in becoming an ultimate human VIP, just go to theultimatehuman.com.
You can sign up there. Join my VIP community.
You can cancel at any time.

Speaker 2 This is where we pour ourselves into you guys. We answer your questions.
I open up live QAs. I always give them access to my guests.

Speaker 2 We're going to bring in functional medicine practitioners that do cases. We do QAs.
We do challenges. We do all kinds of things together.

Speaker 2 And we're even planning our first big experience together as a community. So head over to theultimatehuman.com and sign up to join my ultimate human VIP community.

Speaker 2 Until next time, that's just science.