Ep. 71 Interview Karen Hurd: The Bean Protocol for Total Body Wellness

[Music] Hey everybody, welcome to the Quacks Podcast. So great guest today. Her name is Karen Hurd. She has a very simple protocol that everybody can test out, which may help a variety of different conditions. It's really what attracted me to her work. She's a nutritionist with a practice that has helped thousands of people over the last few decades, and she has a really captivating story on how she got started in the natural health world, which she will share. We do talk a little bit about her classes right off the bat before getting into that story, so enjoy the interview.

Karen Hurd, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

So, I'm really excited to have you on. You talk about some very interesting things with detoxification, with beans, and, you know, the liver. And I think you approach it from an angle that I don't know if many people are approaching it from that angle. But before we jump into that, let's talk about what is your training and what do you do in your practice?

Okay, well, first, let's cover my training. Um, I have a bachelor's degree, but it's in the liberal arts. It was in Spanish. And then I went on into the United States Army into military intelligence. And then in that training, that I also had become the nuclear, biological, chemical defense warfare officer for our battalion of 500 people. And so I have that training in nuclear, biological, chemical warfare. Um, and then after that, I did my training at the American Academy of Nutrition, which is now called the Huntington's College of Health Sciences, and have a comprehensive nutritional diploma from there. Since then, I have gotten my Master of Science degree in biochemistry from the University of Saint Joseph, and I finished that degree in December of 2017. And I'm currently enrolled in the Master of Public Health program at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. So there are my, my training. And then I guess even more important than that formal schooling is the training that I've had for 30 years of practicing. I have been practicing nutrition for 30 years, and that's where the rubber meets the road. That's where you have to apply everything and that you have to figure things out. You know, when you have all this, this formal, you know, schooling, that's all good, but you gotta, when you put it into practice, that requires even more research. So, you know, the research I did for my biochem degree, or like I'm doing now in my Master of Public Health degree, or like I did a nutrition degree, that is very miniscule compared to what I have done for the past 30 years. As I have run into one situation after another that I will spend much time researching that particular topic.

How I work now, as far as what my practice is, is that I am currently doing e-courses for all the way until November 2019. So just shy of a year ago, I have been doing individual nutrition counseling. So, I mean, I would talk to the individual one at a time, usually in my office here, or via the telephone, or Skype if they were international clients, and then help advise them, encourage them as they got better by using nutrition. But my practice has grown over the past 30 years to a point that it's, it is physically impossible for me to meet with all the huge number of people that would like to speak to me. And so I switched the way I'm operating, and now I'm offering e-courses. And so a person can enroll in my e-course, and then I teach them about whatever the topic. Right now, I have 17 e-courses published. Wow. So if you want an e-course on diabetes, or on PMS, or on infertility, or on arthritis, there are 17 different courses. And then you enroll in the course, and then in that course, you get to listen to me teach about that particular topic in depth about, okay, so why, let's understand diabetes a little bit better, or whatever the subject is. Then I give specific protocols for that course. And so there's several protocol calls. And depending on the course you're in, I give a flowchart like you're either mild, medium, or severe with your symptoms. Because you listed all these symptoms, and so you follow the flowchart and go, oh, I need to follow the one, the, the protocol for PCOS, which is a polycystic ovarian syndrome, or I need to follow one for fibrocystic breast disease. And then, then you have a protocol that's lying down that's very specific. These are the things you eat, these are the things you don't eat, and this is how much you eat of these things. And these are the things, if you have any room left over after you get all the do list done, that you are allowed to eat. And these things over here, don't eat them at all. And I've explained in the video series why we're going to eat these certain things and avoid certain things. But the really cool thing about the course is that, okay, so you can watch it as many times over because it's a perpetual thing. You can go back, and once you're enrolled, you can watch the videos as many times as you want. You can go to the Ask Karen platform where all the common questions are asked. But you also, when you enroll in a course, you have unlimited perpetual access to me. So you can email me and say, Karen, I've completed your course in on premenstrual syndrome, but I have this additional question or that additional question that wasn't covered in your standard Ask Karen questions. There's a portion of the course, and then I will email you back directly. So you have this unlimited access to me, and it's all part of the cost of the course, which are actually very reasonable compared to the amount of time that I spent was doing, um, consultations in the past, where you'd have to pay me for every single consultation, every time you talked to me, you had to pay me. This way, you can email me 50 times a day, and I will answer your questions. You say, well, how can you do that? How does that save you time? It's because of the majority of the people, if you're ready for this, I, I spent most of my time, and this is one of the things that motivated me to move to e-courses. I realized that I was spending most of my time on what I call health coach, a health coach job, that is just like, come on, you can, you can give up these things on your no list, you can do this. You know, it's mind over matter. And here's some different techniques to try to, you know, give up your whatever it was that you they didn't want to give up. And so it wasn't really figuring out, okay, we got a person with an inflammation on the eighth cranial nerve, which is causing tinnitus, and we, we got to do something about reducing that inflammation based on the, the mitosis of the cell on the peripheral nervous system glial cells. What does that mean? What do we have to eat? So if there's not any, it's just, it's just a, a, it's a good, it's a good thing to have a health coach to hold your hand and say, no, no, no, you shouldn't have had that cup of coffee today, you know, that was, and you shouldn't have had all that beer and pizza, that's what that's what caused your, your relapse into Crohn's disease, you know, that wasn't a good thing, you know, let's not do that in the future, you know? So I'm spending 85% of my time doing that, and instead of 85% of my time solving problems that are very difficult to solve, because that's where my strengths are. Give me a very difficult problem and let me solve it. And so when you're on an e-course, you don't have any of that health coach stuff, because people don't write in and say, well, I haven't been compliant to the diet, I'm not doing what you said, and so I want to know why I'm not better. They don't ask that anymore. They already know. Yeah, they're that pop in that. So they're not gonna, they're not gonna write me an email and say, oh, please help me with, you know, I went off the wagon, I was at my daughter's birthday party and I ate a bunch of cake and drank a bunch of pop and so now what do I do? Then the answer is obviously, I just get back on the protocol. They don't ask me that anymore because it's obvious. So I'm actually getting more done and helping more people with this new setup by going through the e-courses. Wow.

So what, uh, speaking of like health coach, how did you transition from, you know, this military scientist to a health coach? Well, it, yeah, because what brought that about? That seems like they're kind of on other sides of the spectrum, right?

Oh, it's absolutely. I never, when I was in college, when I was in the United States Army, never even thought about becoming a nutritionist. Never even crossed my mind, not in my wildest dreams. So what motivated me to get there? Well, after I finished my time in service, um, my husband and I, we moved to a place that's just across the river from St. Louis. And, um, he and I, we moved in with our small children. We have three small children. My youngest was 18 months old at the time, into a home. And they had just put down new to the house, not new, but new to the house carpet. It was carpet that had been stored in someone's garage for several years. And they were trying to make the place clean up, look nicer, you know, put down this, you know, carpet, look nicer. But little did they know, and did we know, we moved in. And then it wasn't long after we moved in, there was an outbreak of carpet beetles from this carpet that was laid throughout the house that was in this guy's garage. And you couldn't see the larvae, but boy, you could definitely see the little beetles. And then it came and hatched up. And so we were overrun with the carpet beetles. When I say overrun, you know, you know, some people say, well, there's a spider here or there, there's a beetle or a roach, and you smash them or you set up a roach trap. No, we're overrun. I mean, you couldn't step on the carpet without several of them running over the top of your foot. You know, you couldn't, you couldn't open a drawer without, you know, hundreds of them spilling out of the drawers. And, you know, it was, they were everywhere. And so it was, it was a bad problem. Because of my chemical warfare training, I knew that if we had an exterminator come out, that there were some dangers in the drugs that are not the drugs, and the, the sprays that they would use. And that most likely they would use an organophosphate, which is extremely dangerous to human health. And I was, I was aware of that. But it's just like, we cannot smash them, kill them, sweep them up with the vacuum fast enough. You know, so we did have a local exterminator come out. And we did go away for the several hours that you're supposed to be out of the house, and you have all the windows open and all that. And we came home. And, and because of my army training, I knew there was something wrong immediately with my 18-month-old. Because she was always, she was on the carpet, she's on the floor. The rest of us are all upright walking, but she's still on the floor most of the time. And so she started with the classic symptoms of nerve agent poisoning or got organophosphates or nerve agents. And so she went into a seizure, a grand mal seizure. And we rushed to the hospital. She, she came out of a seizure. And then they said, oh, look, she has double pneumonia. I said, double pneumonia is actually a symptom of nerve agent poisoning. She wasn't sick before. This is an acute thing. I think she's been poisoned by the, you know, the extermination of, you know, the carpet beetles. And they said, no, no, no, that can't happen. And they sent us back home. And she's on antibiotics. And oh, remarkably, you know, in just a very short time, less than a day, her double pneumonia cleared up. And we went back home, and she went into another seizure once we got back into the house. This time she seized for over an hour and 10 minutes. And the emergency room physician didn't think that she was going to live because he had given her maximum amounts of volume, and she didn't stop. And this is a grand mal seizure. A grand mal seizure is where all four limbs are jerky, and your eyes are rolled back in your head, you're frothing at the mouth, you are, this is, this is a, a terrible seizure because lactic acid builds up. And then of course, because I was thinking that this is a nerve agent poisoning, then her lungs would be filling with fluid, and she would have not only double pneumonia, but she would suffocate. And so the emergency room physician, he was, he, he said, she's not going to live. I have given her the maximum amount of volume. You cannot seize for an hour and 10 minutes, or it's going to be this where, you know. And so my husband and I joined hands over our little girl who's on the table, strapped down because she doesn't like, she's bouncing off the table because she was jerking so hard. And he prayed, dear God, you gave her to us, you can take her home. And when he said that prayer, she stopped seizing. The emergency room physician wheeled around and said, quick, we have to do, you know, an x-ray, we have to do a spinal tap. And lo and behold, despite her being on antibiotics, she had double pneumonia again, because antibiotics, this was not a bacterial infection. You know, they had said it was a febrile seizure because of, you know, some infection. And wasn't that at all. Her temperature never went over 100 degrees anyway. So they said, you know, it's just, it's just, you know, another febrile seizure. That I said, I want to go to St. Louis Children's Hospital. I'm not staying in this little hospital here. We were in a like a local hospital. So we went by ambulance to St. Louis Children's Hospital. And there she was admitted. And they did all kinds of tests except the one test that I asked them to do. They tested her for epilepsy mainly is what they were looking at. And I said, please, you have to run a cholinesterase level. This is the level that will say if she's been poisoned or not. They would not, they flat refused. A simple blood draw, it's a simple blood test. They would not. They said, your little girl was not poisoned. This is a febrile seizure. And you know, we're going to put her on phenobarbital. And that's an anti-seizure drug. And this is, this is just a, you know, this is nothing to do with, you know, your house being sprayed for carpet beetles. And I will never forget the day that I sat in that hospital room with Ruth. And all of those, they had the entire team of neurologists in the same room with me. And the head neurologist looked at me and said, Mrs. Hurd, you were barking up the wrong tree with this whole poisoning thing. Drop it and go home. And so I, I guess I am barking up the wrong tree. These are all MDs, they know what they're talking about. I'm a little girl who has a man who has a bachelor's degree in Spanish and had some time in the army with this stuff, with, you know, chemical warfare. But I am not an MD. I guess I'm pretty stupid, you know? You begin to doubt yourself, you really do. And so when, especially when you have several of them telling you, telling you that you're wrong, you're just absolutely wrong. So we went back home, same house. We were not there for very long, and Ruth's eyes went to pinpoints. This is all symptoms of nerve agent poisoning. Her eyes went to pinpoint pupils. She started with a slight cough. She started with the diarrhea. She did not seize, but she was on loading doses, high doses of phenobarbital. And I thought, she's not going to seize. But she has all the symptoms of nerve agent poisoning. It's what I taught these 500 troops. I was responsible for teaching 500 troops these symptoms for years when I was in the United States Army. It's everything was happening just the way I had learned it. It's going to happen. I said, but she's not going to seize this time. Her lungs will simply fill with fluid because she's on the phenobarbital. She won't seize. And then she will suffocate. And she will be dead. I will lay her in her crib, and I will come back in, and she will be dead. And that's when I said, I don't care how crazy they think I am, I'm walking out of here. And I walked out of the house and did not return. And I took my other two children. They were older. And we were all sick. None of us were feeling well, but none of us were seizing. And, you know, and I left. And I left the house. And we lived in the church nursery for a few weeks. And then finally, we moved into a hotel room. And I, till I could get to the bottom of it, you know, was this really a poisoning or not? And so I called every poison control center that I could possibly, possibly call. I mean, and they would say, well, you should call this poison control center. We've never heard of this before. You should call this one. Oh, in the, in between, I did call the exterminator company and said, Nate, please tell me the exact name of what you sprayed in the house. Dursban 2E. And I said, that's an organophosphate. It's a chlorpyrifos, right? And they said, exactly. How do you think we kill the bugs? I said, it's a nerve agent. They said, exactly. That's how the bugs die. And so, um, so that was confirmed. And so, but they, you know, they weren't, you know, they just sprayed according to what they spray. And so, wow, poison control center after poison control center. And always getting the next, well, we don't know anything about this, try here. Finally, I talked to a poison control center in Dallas, Texas. And they said, you know, we don't know anything about it, but you should talk to Dr. Sheldon Wagner, who works at the university in Corvallis, out on the West Coast here in the U.S. He's a child toxicologist, and he is the foremost expert on this. So I called his office. They gave me the number. And I thought, you know, and it's always to run around, you know, I'll connect you to this one, or that one, you know, how it goes. And so I actually got a hold of his assistant, who put me on the line to him. I was just like, I'm talking to the real McCoy. I cannot believe it. And I explained the situation. And I said, they told me that my little girl couldn't be poisoned. He said, that's absolutely ridiculous. Of course, she could be poisoned. Have you had a lab check the concentration of the organophosphate in the rug? I said, I went to a lab in St. Louis and asked them if they would do that, but they wanted $7,000 upfront as a deposit, and then it would be several more thousands after that. We didn't have any money. My husband's on this hardly any salary at all as a pastor of a very small church. You know, it's just like, we have no money. And I, and I told them we didn't have the money to be able to foot the bill to be able to have the carpet tested. We weren't even living in the house, and we were just living in a, in the church nursery for a long time, in a hotel. And then he said, I have a lab. I want you to do this. I want you to have, don't you or any of your children, or if you have somebody else, go in there and you cut out pieces. And he gave me the dimensions. I want pieces this big. I want one from the middle living room carpet, one from under her crib. And you're nursing this baby still? And I said, yes. And he says, I want samples of your breast milk. Get it on dry ice and get it to me here tomorrow. I will test it myself personally. Did all that. He calls after he gets the samples and he tests them, which is like a day and a half later. And he says, the organophosphate, and taking into account that we have a breakdown because he's doing all the calculations and the breakdown of how fast organophosphate breaks down, he says, this was at 100 times the safe and normal level of organophosphate. There's no doubt in the world that your little girl was poisoned. And I would like to know, why hasn't your physician done a cholinesterase level? And I said, I asked him to, but they refused. He said, give me the name of your physician immediately. So I did. And in 30 minutes, I get a call from the physician. And he says, Mrs. Hurd, would you bring Ruth in for a cholinesterase level? We had got a call from Dr. Sheldon Wagner out at Corvallis at the university. And he says, and he sent me to the library to start doing some reading of current research on organophosphates and the amount. Anyway, he said, I'm going to be doing that. And would you bring her in? Well, I brought her in. They did the test. Guess what? It was positive. She'd been poisoned. Wow. It was. And so the chief administrator of St. Louis Children's Hospital called and said, we apologize. The neurologist should have listened to you. They should have done a cholinesterase level. Please, we're sorry. Do not sue the hospital. We apologize, blah, blah, blah, blah. We didn't sue anybody. Nobody was purposely trying to make mistakes. You know, we've called the nation company. They contacted Dow Chemical, who was the one who distributed the chemical. Dow Chemical pulled the whole batch off the market. It was a big, big to-do. I mean, and then the Illinois Park Department, Environmental Agency, uh, our Environmental Protection Agency had to come in. And they had all the carpet had to be ripped out and hauled by special waste carrier to a hazardous waste facility. They had to come in, they had to remove everything that was porous because then the organophosphate was taken air. They had to go in and clean with super tropical bleach to break down the organophosphate. Then they had to come through with air sniffers to make sure the house was habitable again. It was a big, big deal. So in the, in between, and all this is happening, Ruth is very sick. She's very, very sick. I'm sick. I was carrying a baby at the time. I had miscarried. That baby was it the organophosphate poisoning? We will never know. In my mind, it was. But how do you know that? Nobody knows. And so everybody, none of my family is feeling well. And we're dealing with all this, you know, trying to get the house cleaned up. And, you know, it just, it was very stressful. But the most stressful part is that Ruth is declining by the day. She's no longer on phenobarbital because there's no seizures anymore because there's no exposure to the organophosphate anymore. But she is declining. We took her to specialists in St. Louis. We took her specialists in Chicago. And I conferred with specialists with that in Dallas, Texas, over the phone. And with all her liver enzymes, her bilirubin, and her, her liver function tests, all showed that her liver was failing. And the prognosis was all the same, that she did not have long to live because her liver was completely failing and her immune system was completely irreparably damaged by the organophosphate. And they told me, you have to face says she is not going, she is not going to live. And I said, there's certainly something you can do, something. What is there to do? And all of the experts that I contacted from St. Louis, Dallas, and Chicago said the same thing, there is nothing that we can do. I will never forget the day that I sat in the specialist's office in St. Louis, and he said, Mrs. Hurd, there's nothing we can do to turn around this situation. But we have never documented in the medical literature a case of someone dying of organophosphate poisoning. And we would like to do liver biopsies on a regular basis of Ruth's liver. Ruth is the name of my daughter, 18 months old, to do regular biopsies of her liver so that we can chronicle her death. And wow, that seems awful. It was awful. I said, the answer is no, and goodbye. I will not be returning. And liver biopsies, by the way, very painful. And she'd been stuck in, you know, you know how it goes, and withdrawing blood from a kid and all that she went through with all the testing and the spinal taps. And anyway, so, so what did you do? I went to the university in St. Louis. It's Washington University in St. Louis. It's a medical university. And I went to the library. I said, well, I have an undergrad degree. I know how to use a library. I can at least learn everything that I can about the liver and about detoxifying the liver, about the immune system. And so I presented myself. They let the public come in and use the medical library there. And this is back, and we're talking 1989, early. We're talking in January now, 1990. Everything's on microfiche, you know, we're not, is that we don't have this, you know, you can type it into your, you know, your browser and Google and, you know, just bring up, you know, Google Scholar and you can get all these articles. No, no, this is, you're looking at all these journals, and, you know, they're all in microfiche. And then you read this one journal article, and you read all the references, and you take those references, and then you go read those articles. And they reference articles in, anyway, so that's what I did. And I learned about the enterohepatic recirculation. I learned about the liver. I learned about the immune system. I learned everything that I could. And so then I came up with my own plan of what to do for Ruth. And that's what I'll talk to you about the beans in a minute, because I know you want to talk about that. But I know to stay focused that you want to know how I got into that. So I, I came up with my own plan for Ruth, what I'm going to do. And what did I have as far as tools? The only thing I had was food. I don't have any medications. I don't have any cool equipment, lab equipment, or surgical procedures. I have nothing. I'm just the layperson out there, and I can feed her food. And so that's what I did. And Ruth began to improve and improve and improve. So that when I took her back, the doctors were astounded that her liver enzymes came within the normal ranges. She was recovering. They're like, wow, can't believe this. So, yeah, so the story ended. We think that's ended, and that's the end of the chapter. No, that is only the beginning of my, my new life. Because I started to get phone calls because Ruth is now recovering, and she is, she's coming along nicely. The rest of us are recovering and coming along nicely. We're back in our cleaned-up house, you know, no carpets. We didn't go back to carpets. There's just no carpets in the house, you know. We're just gonna have, you know, they put down tile for floor, you know. And so, and so we, people start to call me and say, I have a son, I have a daughter, I'm my husband, my father, my, my wife, or whatever, and they have this, this, and this problem. What should we do to get them better? And I'll say, I said, first of all, how did you get my number? How do you even go to call me? Well, we read the article in the St. Louis Globe Democrat. I said, what article in the St. Louis Democrat? And then they pointed me to an article, and sure enough, there was an article in their, "Little Girl Destined to Die Lives," and they were talking about my case. I don't know who published it. Nobody ever came and talked to me about it. I mean, I don't know who gave them the information. It's just this little article in the St. Louis Globe Democrat. And people, however they, they got a hold of me. And I say, I don't, I can't help. I can't help you. I don't know what to do for your daughter, or your husband, or your father, whoever it is, you know, I have no training. I have, listen, I can speak a little bit of Spanish, and I know a whole lot about military intelligence and chemical biological warfare, but that's about it. Okay? So, um, I don't know. And they said, please, please, we don't care. We don't care. You helped your daughter, and she's surviving against all the odds that the doctors gave you, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, well, I guess I could go down to the Washington University Medical Library and read about the situation, make recommendations, but you have to understand, I have no training. I'm not a nurse. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a, I'm nothing. They said, we don't care. So that started my unofficial practice. And then I got a call from Southwestern Bell Telephone, which was in one Bell Tower at that time. Since then, they moved to Texas, but at that time, they were in St. Louis. And they said, we have got hundreds of people requesting that you will come and be a speaker at our brown bag seminar. I said, what? What are you talking about? At least they have these little, you know, um, seminars during the lunch hour for their employees because they employed thousands of employees. They filled up that entire skyscraper and, and, uh, St. Louis. And they can, you know, go to professional, you know, learn about how to take better care of your finances, or this, and type of, you know, this, or that. And, you know, they had a lot of requests for me to come talk about nutrition. I said, well, and come, but what do you want me to talk about? Well, how about just general nutrition? We had 300 people in the lecture hall at one time on these brown bags. And they had me come back month after month. Then the Drury Inn started asking me to do brown bags. And then St. Louis Parish, and I'm not advertising, they're just this word of mouth. And in the St. Louis Parish, um, Catholic Parish, they have, St. Louis was a big Catholic town. And, you know, they said, we want you to come talk to your parent-teacher association. And, you know, and, and then finally, the University of Missouri called me and said, Karen, we, we'd like you to come teach nutrition. I said, I have no credentialing. They said, we know that. It'd be really helpful if you could get some. [Laughter] And so I said, I think that's a good idea. So that's when I enrolled in the American Academy of Nutrition and went ahead and got my comprehensive nutrition, um, training. So that's where it all started. Now, in the, in between, did I ever teach the University of Missouri? No, I didn't. Because my husband took a pastorate here where I am now, in Fall Creek, Wisconsin. And so we moved to Fall Creek before I finished my, my, um, my training for nutrition. And so then I just continued my practice up here. And my practice has just grown through the years. And so that's, that's how I got into it. Is illness. And by the way, Ruth is alive and well today. She's, she is, um, in her 30s, and she's married and has a little girl. And she's actually my, my chief executive assistant here. I mean, if somebody, if you do enroll in a course, and you, you're going to talk to somebody called Ruth, because Ruth answers a whole lot of emails for me because we get, she answers the ones that she can answer, you know. And so if you want to know who that is, that's the girl who lived. That's Ruth.

And so what was in that concoction that you gave her?

The main ingredient was the soluble fiber. And the soluble fiber is what we find in beans. So soluble fiber has this unique ability that it can bind with the digestive fluid, bile. Bile is where the liver puts all of its fat-soluble waste. And organophosphate is a fat-soluble waste. And in fact, most of our very harmful wastes that we're clearing are fat-soluble. So they're cleared through the liver. And so because the liver recycles though at 95%, whatever is inbound in those micelle, micelle is a fat particle, um, and bile is made out of fat, then 95% of that, we know 95 is recycled and goes back into the bloodstream. So we, we never really get rid of everything unless you have a way to carry that bile out. Well, soluble fiber combined with bile and a very tight, it catches it in a net. It's a, it's a polysaccharide that is like a teeny, tiny mesh net with little tiny holes, if you will. And it can capture these molecules and keep them from absorbing. And so it's at the entero, it's, uh, the enterohepatic recirculation happens at the terminal part of the ileum. That's where we absorb fats. We don't absorb fats from our mouth, or from our stomach, or from our duodenum, which is part of the small colon, or the jejunum and ileum. Those are all parts of the small colon. Well, actually, they're absorbed from the last part of the small colon, which is the ileum. And so what is that enterohepatic recirculation? That is when we, when the liver clears fat-soluble waste out of the bloodstream, it has to get rid of it somehow. And we cannot send it down to the kidneys unless we go through a process of detoxifying it and making it water-soluble. But the vast majority of our waste is fat-soluble and very toxic. So the liver is going to, it sometimes will break it down, sometimes it will not. It depends on the substance. And sometimes it actually makes it more toxic. What the liver does, sometimes it makes it less toxic, sometimes it doesn't touch it, like with hormones. It doesn't even touch the hormones. It just lets them go through as is because they're small little molecules. So the liver is pulling out all of this fat-soluble waste, and then it puts it into this digestive fluid called bile. And the bile travels down tubes, if you will, they're called biliary ducts. And it travels, some of it goes into your gallbladder where it's stored and concentrated to 10 times the strength. Some of it drips directly into the duodenum. The duodenum is just underneath your sternum, above your belly button. It's the first part of your small colon. And the bile is there for two purposes: one, to carry out all the waste product, and two, it's the digestive fluid that breaks down the fats that you're eating in a meal. And so your gallbladder is storing the bile. And when you eat a meal, then the gallbladder will go through peristalsis, which is a smooth muscle contraction, and will actually squirt large amounts of bile into the duodenum. What's dripping directly from the liver is just that, it's a slow drip that just goes 24/7, is always dripping. And so then the bile digests the fatty acids you've had in the meal. And then the bile and all the food that you've just consumed and partially digested and moving down through the parts of the colon, and it reaches the last part of the small colon, which is called the ileum. And the last part is called the terminal part of the ileum. And there we absorb fat. So we'll absorb the fats that the bile was breaking down. And then we also absorb our own bile. How much? 95%. Well, what about the toxins that are contained within the bile? They are also absorbed at 95%. So that all goes back into your bloodstream. And so then the liver has to clear all that out again. But in the meantime, you have more fat-soluble waste. And we always think, we're always thinking of, oh, you know, bad things like pesticides and herbicides and, you know, air pollutants and all that is what it's clearing. Certainly, it's doing that. But the vast majority of what the liver is clearing is our own metabolic waste. And some of our metabolic, a big part of our metabolic waste are the hormones that we secrete. Hormones, almost all of them are made out of fats. There's a few that are not, specifically the thyroid is made out of proteins, but most of them are made out of fats. And so all those, if you have excess hormones circulating in the bloodstream, that's not good. If you have excess estrogen, you could get estrogen-fed cancers. If you have too much testosterone, then you can have problems with testosterone-driven cancer, you know. So we, we have to clear these things. And hormones are not broken down. They're just sent straight down into the bile. But then you recycle 95% of them. So they come rolling back and are back in the bloodstream. Plus, she produced more while all this bile was down the GI tract. GI is gastrointestinal tract. And then when it comes back, we have new plus the old. And so what happens is we recycle this bile over and over and over again. The bile actually gets more and more toxic. It has more and more waste products in it that we're not able to clear. So then the bile, because these are fat-soluble things, the pH of the bile changes. Your body pH in your bloodstream is always 7.4. It never changes. It's always 7.4. If it goes up, goes down, you die. I mean, you die right away. I mean, you just can't, it's got to be level. But outside of the bloodstream, in your GI tract, you can have a different pH. And when you, because fats are made along carbon chains with hydrogens attached to the carbons, the more hydrogen that you have, then that changes the pH. The pH is just a negative logarithm of hydrogen ion concentration. A hydrogen ion is the same as a hydrogen atom, or we also call them protons. And so the more hydrogens that you have on the fat, then that means it's going to drop the pH because it's a negative logarithm of hydrogen ion concentration. Well, what if, what happens when you drop the pH in something? What a lowering of the pH means, it becomes more acidic. So then the bile irritates the biliary ducts that are coming through. It irritates the inner wall of the gallbladder. It irritates your colon as it's going through. And then it causes inflammation. It can cause ulcers. It can cause diverticulosis, or it can cause, that's not an outpocketing of the larger colon, because some of this bile is going to be moving, 5% of it's going to be moving into the large colon. 95% is being recycled. But 5% moves into the large colon. And why, why is it reabsorbed? You know, why isn't it going out of the body? Because it's a fat. And there's nothing bound to the fat to keep it from reabsorbing. All fats are absorbed at the terminal part of the ileum. It's the chemical construct of it. You would have to actually attach another molecule to it, which is what soluble fiber does. It's actually capturing these molecules, and so it keeps it from being absorbed. If you don't have soluble fiber, it will be absorbed. You have to have something to prevent its absorption.

Okay, so the, the beans, or the soluble fiber, basically comes in and binds to the bile, which is got all this toxic sludge in it, and it shuttles it out of the body. Is that kind of, that's kind of what went on with your daughter? That's kind of what your, the whole basis of your practice is, right?

That's exactly what happens. Because see, the real beauty of the soluble fiber is not only can it bind with bile, but it is impossible for soluble fiber to pass through the intestinal barrier. There's no place that any fiber can pass through the intestinal barrier, whether it's soluble, which is the only thing that will bind bile, insoluble fiber will not bind bile, but no fiber will pass the intestinal barrier. All of it, 100% of all fibers are excreted to the toilet in the form of a bowel movement. And anything that that soluble fiber caught is also being excreted. So then we don't return to the liver all this nasty toxic waste. And so the liver is able to basically detoxify and begin to detoxify your body too, because we store different toxins in lipomas throughout your body. And, and also bile is made out of triacylglycerols, which is, uh, the medical term for triacylglycerol is, um, a triglyceride. In chemistry, we call it a triacylglycerol, but it's the same molecule. And so then we lower your cholesterol by eating soluble fiber, because you'll be making new bile. Because why make new bile if you're recycling your old bile? You already have it. We don't need to use up any of your triglycerides in your bloodstream. You'll say, well, LDL is a real problem, low-density lipoprotein. But the low-density lipoprotein, it's just a triglyceride core with an apolipoprotein A shell. So, I mean, we just break the shell, and that's what an HDL molecule helps us do in the liver. And then you have the spilling out of the, the triglycerides. And so to clear the triglycerides, if we make them into bile and we throw the bile away, you just threw away all your bad cholesterol. Really cool.

Yeah. So, so you recommend people eat beans. What goes into that recommendation?

A half a cup. Now, this is given that you're just a normal out there person that doesn't really have any health problems and you're fine. Half a cup, you know, for a person 120 pounds or more, unless you're a really big guy, I mean, big football player type of guy, they'll have to have more per serving. But, um, half a cup, three times a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So you'll be getting 15 grams in a half a cup of cooked beans. There's 5 grams of soluble fiber. And so they are the richest source of soluble fiber we have. Vegetables don't even hold a candle to this. Neither does oats or oatmeal.

And so if people do this, what do they expect? You know, what is this to like keep their health better? I mean, what what's kind of the aim?

Well, you, it certainly will help you with general good health. But what it does is it prevents heart disease. It prevents all kinds of colon and gastrointestinal problems. It prevents cancer. It prevents anxiety, depression, mental health issues. It prevents diabetes. You know, it does that basically by preventing the buildup of these toxins.

Exactly, exactly. And so that's just, and then if you have a person that's really sick, you know, they have, you know, some really severe problems, and they may have to eat their beans more frequently. When I was sick, I gave her beans several, I mean, we're talking eight to 12 times a day. And she wouldn't eat them. She, at that point, she was so weak, she would hardly, she could hardly eat. And so I just had to shoot them down, put them, you know, blend them and put them down in an oral syringe and shoot them down the back of her throat.

Yeah. So what, what kind of conditions do you find really respond well to this in your practice?

PCOS. That's any, any women's problem with, you know, PMS, premenstrual syndrome, polycystic ovarian syndrome, fibrocystic breasts, uterine fibroids, cysts on the ovary. Um, people with anxiety really need this because anxiety is an overproduction of very specifically epinephrine and norepinephrine, two hormones made in the adrenal glands. Um, they are big ones. Infertility. Most infertility is caused by an overproduction of hormones. And that's a very long explanation. I have a whole course on that to explain it because it's extremely detailed. But I mean, it, and gastrointestinal problems. Oh, you've got to have beans. And so many people, but they have gastrointestinal problems, whether it's Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, or it's just IBS, which is an irritable bowel syndrome, or IBD, which is inflammatory bowel disease. Whatever, they're afraid of beans, you know, or it's just like, this is exactly what you need because we have to change the pH. So we got to pull some of this fat, these, you know, because it's getting more and more concentrated with the hydrogen ions. We got to bring this pH back up. And we're going to do that by eating the soluble fiber, by throwing away the bile.

Wow. Do anybody, you know, any stories stick out to you in your mind of somebody who, you know, did this and really had a great recovery?

Oh, about 30,000 stories. I've been long, I've been doing this so long, it has become so commonplace. I will get dozens of emails each week saying, I feel so much better.

Can't believe this. This is the first time in years I've had no PMS. We've been trying to have children for years, and I am pregnant. I'm out 18 weeks pregnant. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

For my gallstones, I've gone in, and my doctor said, "Look at all these gallstones that you have." You know, and gallstones are just bile that has got so much hydrogen. Because what I didn't tell you, you not only change a pH when you add hydrogens to something, you also change the physical state of the bile. Bile is a liquid, but when you keep adding hydrogens, it turns it into a solid. Well, what solid bile is called? They're called gallstones.

And so, and so, you know, I just got an email last week, you know, from somebody saying, "Look, I want to show you." They're showing me their actual ultrasound. "Look here at all these these gallstones I have, and look how after I've been on the diet for a couple months here, there's only one left, and it's diffused. It means it's already breaking up and going, going away." You know, I hear these stories every day. I mean, it's just lots and lots of them.

I used to have panic attacks. Or, or I'm an actress, and, you know, before I go out on stage, I just make sure that I eat my soluble fiber because it brings down my nervousness and anxiety so that I'm calm, cool, and collected and go out there and do my part. You know, it's just lots and lots.

What do you think of the negative talk around beans? I mean, there's a lot of stuff online about, you know, anti-nutrients and beans, like maybe overgrowth of bad bacteria, hypothyroidism. I mean, what's your kind of take on those?

Well, first of all, you have to be specific on, you know, what it is. Most people are all upset about the phytic acid and about oxalates, which are found in all foods that grow from the ground, and beans included. And beans can be a higher source of that. But whenever you soak or cook a bean, you're lowering the phytic acid, and you're lowering it. I mean, I've got tons of studies on this stuff that actually go through and show you by what percentage these things are dropped when you soak and cook a bean. So a lot of people aren't really looking at the research. It's because they don't know. You know, I've had 30 years of studying research and doing in-depth, you know, work on this. So they don't know.

A lot of people are scared to death of lectins. It's like, why in the world would we be scared of lectins? When I hear somebody, you know, I lectins are one of the most important cellular mediators that we have. Without lectins, our immune system cannot talk. One cell, one T cell cannot talk to another T cell. It means our white blood cells can't even communicate with each other without lectins because they are such important, they're called ligands, they're actually triggering receptor sites on our cells so that we can be able to send and receive messages and communicate. They are absolutely critical.

And then as far as, you know, the gut health, beans couldn't be better for your large colon because they have the fiber there. Now, our gut health, you say, "Well, they get fermented." Everything can get fermented, but the fermentation process is actually triggered by hormones, not by what you eat. What you eat is what's getting fermented. It's not what's creating the fermentation process. And so we, you know, we're blaming the wrong thing.

And then as far as making an overgrowth of bad bacteria in the gut, no, not at all. If you have an overgrowth of bad bacteria in the gut, you're going to be hospitalized, and you're going to be on massive doses of antibiotics like vancomycin to keep you alive. You know, a lot of people are big into the, you know, the microbiome. I totally get it. I mean, I'm a student of that too. But what most people don't realize is that bacteria multiply exponentially, and they're live organisms, and so they have to have something to eat, and they have to have a place to reside. They have to have a home. They have to have resources. Well, the large colon is where they reside, and there's only enough room for so many of them. And then the biome, biome is a home for for the bacteria. The biome is completely filled up. And so then there are, they are self-limiting in the reproduction because when we're talking about bacteria multiplying exponentially, one becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes sixteen. That's what we mean by exponentially, and it goes very, very fast. I mean, so fast, I I can't even say the words fast enough, and they have already divided and multiplied several times over by the time I finish the sentence. And so once they fill up the biome, then there's, they're self-limited. There's no reason to divide and multiply anymore because the space is full. There's no more food. There's no more room. And so the biome is filled.

And the only time we wipe out our gut flora, and that's what we call these bacteria, the good beneficial bacteria, is when we take an antibiotic. If we take an antibiotic, when you finish the course of antibiotics, then it is an appropriate thing to take a probio, a probiotic. Beans, by the way, are not a probiotic. They're a prebiotic. They're the food. They're the food that the bacteria eat. And so any carbohydrate, by the way, is, any any complex carbohydrate is. So it's not just beans.

So, so when you take an antibiotic, then it's an appropriate thing to take a probiotic after you finish on the last day of your antibiotic to replace the gut flora because if you don't, then you can get some bad gut flora, and a lot of people after taking antibiotics are back right back up in the hospital. It was a C. diff infection. C. diff is very, very nasty and can be life-threatening. C. diff is a bad bacteria, and if it overtakes your gut, you're in deep, deep trouble. And you get to the hospital before, nah, now, now, you know, and you will take antibiotics for it, which shouldn't set you up to have another C. diff infection because you're wiping the field clean. You don't have any good flora. So that's when you would take your probiotics is after the use of an antibiotic.

But on an everyday basis, if you're not in the hospital with a C. diff or E. coli or H. pylori, these are all bad bacteria, and we all have some of that bad bacteria in our gut, but it's such a small amount compared to all the good bacteria that we have. We have no symptoms. And so we, we don't need to. All the good bacteria are multiplying. As their comrades, bacteria has a lifespan that's only so long, and then as one bacteria dies, it's replaced immediately by another one. And so when you take a probiotic on a gut that is already full of all these probio, all those good bacteria, then you actually create a slide-off of bacteria. You're creating a gut biome problem because you've overplanted the fields. You've overgrazed the pasture.

It's sort of like, um, like, like how many people live in your household? Uh, look, just tell me, there's two of you. Okay? You, you have enough food for the two of you, correct? You, and you have enough room for the two of you. Your house or whatever, your apartment, you have enough room. So two is good, and you have the resources for two. We're going to move 200 people in with you. Now, you don't get to build onto your home, home. You don't get any space. You don't get to add any more food. You're going to share the food that you had enough for two of you. You're going to share between the 202 of you now. Oh, and then you're going to share all the space and the towels in the bathroom. And, and you've got 202 people sharing the same resources that were only supplying two people before. What will happen to all 202 of you? Yeah, it's gonna get ugly. It's gonna get ugly, and you're all going to die.

And so people take probiotics, they say, "Yeah, but when I take probiotics, I don't have constipation anymore." Do you understand why you don't? It's because you're plowing off good gut flora like crazy. It's just being pooped into the toilet all the time because there's this competition for resources. Here comes all this stuff. You're taking a probiotic, and your gut, your biome is full of good bacteria. How do I know it's already full of good bacteria? Because you're not in the hospital with a C. diff infection. If you were, you wouldn't be talking to me. I'm, you know, whoever's listening to this, if you're in the hospital, C. diff infection, yes, you have a problem with bacteria. But if you're not, then you were okay. And so then you have this probiotic that you're taking on a regular basis, and that comes down into a gut that is already full. And so there's this competition. You say, "Hey, that's my food." "No, that's my food." "No." "Then don't take." "That's my space." "No, get out of my space." And there's this, this fight. It's ugly. So everybody gets into a fight, and they end up all dying. A lot of them died, and then we were sloughed out.

So, is there anyone who you think would be a bad fit for the bean, you know, protocol? Somebody who, you know, might not react well to it?

Absolutely. Right off the top of the head is if you have kidney disease, you should not be on the bean protocol. So people have different stages. There's five stages of kidney disease. We have to do soluble fiber in the form of psyllium. Then psyllium doesn't have the potassium. See, beans are rich in potassium. They have calcium. They're a wonderful source of folic acid. They have a lot of good minerals and water-soluble nutrients in them. But if you have kidney disease, this will put a load on your kidneys that are already struggling. So we will still want to do soluble fiber, but we will do it in the form of psyllium that doesn't carry all of those other wonderful nutrients that would normally be good for you. So the only one would be is kidney disease.

Some people will say that they're allergic, you know, to a black bean or a lentil or whatever it is, then we choose a different bean. And if they say, "Well, I'm allergic to all beans," then we just use the psyllium instead.

All right, what, uh, have you looked at all into? I know there's some pharmaceuticals out there that will bind to bile. Um, I think like cholestyramine is one. I think there's some others too. Have you looked at those at all?

Oh, yeah. They're, they're typically used by an MD that will prescribe those with people who have a problem. But the beans are doing, they are doing a more effective job because they don't have any side effects compared to the bile binders. So, you know, you can, you can take a med if you want to. I mean, it's, it's up to each person whether, how do you want to treat yourself? With food or with a medication? It's up to you. But the beans are actually more effective than your cholestyramine or, you know, there's several of them out there.

Okay. Um, well, I mean, we don't have a ton of time left, and so I know you have extensive knowledge on diet and stuff. I, I wanted to just tap your experience and kind of get your opinion on something, which is, you know, right now, in kind of the macro view, there is this fight kind of going on between the keto diet and like the vegan diet, and they are diametrically opposite to each other. And yet people will find that they really get helped by one or the other. In your opinion, why, why is this occurring? Why is this a thing?

Okay, well, first of all, we are assuming that the effects that they're getting, and this is a big assumption, is from the keto diet or from the vegetarian diet. But when you do a keto diet or vegetarian diet, you also are making several other changes. Oftentimes, you're giving up sugar. In fact, most of those, both of those diets, you do, you're encouraged to give up your sugar. Is sugar giving up your sugar is that why you feel better? Is it because you're on the vegetarian diet or on the keto diet? Both of those diets have some short-term benefits that you will feel better, you know, just because you're on the vegetarian diet or on the keto diet. However, long-term, you're going to have some serious, serious health effects. With the vegetarian diet, you'll become more and more fatigued as the time goes on, as the months and years go on. With the keto diet, you'll end up with some serious kidney problems. It's very, you're looking at that because the keto diet puts you in the state of where you have to always be breaking proteins down, and then there's the fats that are being broken down too. But you, this is very hard on your liver, very hard on your kidneys with all the metabolites that are made from it. So long-term, you're making yourself worse. But you really have to, when you're doing something with diet like this, we just forget to look at all the other variables. Did you also give up your caffeine when you went on your keto diet? Did you give up your fruit? Did you, what else did you give up? You know, because those might be the things that are making you better. So yeah.

Gotcha. Uh, so what do you think is the probably the worst mainstream advice that you hear out there?

I hear this over and over and over and over. Nutrition will not fix your problems. The only thing that will fix your problems are medications and surgeries. And that for the vast majority, I'd say over 90% of all of our situations, that does not hold true. For some things, if you're in a car wreck, you really need to go into surgery to have your arms sewn back on or whatever, you know, fix the, you know, the bleeding part of you that got all banged up, yes. But to say that, I hear this over and over, there is nothing that nutrition can do to dissolve a gallstone. There's nothing that nutrition can do to resolve your depression and anxiety. There's nothing that nutrition can do to help you with cancer. There's nothing that nutrition can do to help you with, name it. And that's the biggest travesty because nutrition can help all of those things.

You know, we don't suffer from acute infectious disease. Even with COVID-19, that's not an acute infectious disease like the bubonic plague. What we suffer with most people, and you can check out World Health Organization, you can go CDC, and, you know, I've studied this in my Master of Public Health, they're just hammered at us as most people in the world are dying from chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer, diabetes, arthritis. These are chronic diseases that can be controlled with your diet.

So you talked a little bit about your courses. Is there anything else that's new that you're getting into? Do you have any new books coming out?

Um, I have my neurological course that will be coming out probably in December, and that'll be my 18th course. And I'm going to have a course on cancer and a course on heart disease. I've, I mean, I could go on forever publishing courses, but those are, it'll just be new courses. And if they want to access those, they just go to my website.

What is your website? How can people find you?

My website is just my name. My name is Karen Hurd, and it's K-A-R-E-N, so the traditional spelling of Karen, and then Hurd, which is spelled H-U-R-D, H-U-R-D. So the website is KarenHurd.com.

Right, and you can go, you can look at all the different courses. You know, you say, click to see our e-courses, and you can look at all of them, and there's a description about all of them. You can watch an introductory video for free on each one of them. So.

All right, Karen, well, thank you so much for coming on.

You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

So that was, uh, Karen Hurd. I will have the links that she mentioned in the show notes if you want to check those out, see the classes and stuff that she offers. In the interview, her bean protocol, you know, super simple. It was half cooked, half a cup of cooked beans per meal, which would give you about 15 grams of soluble fiber per day. So I, I personally do some beans with breakfast and dinner, usually about half a can of these organic refried beans that I get at Costco, and I enjoy it. I think I think it works great for me. I definitely feel better doing a little bit of beans. I didn't ask her whether she liked certain types of beans, but from reading her stuff online, it does seem like most any beans will do. I think testing out different types of beans would probably probably be like a good idea. So for me, black beans make my teeth feel sensitive for some reason. I don't know why. I avoid red beans too because they have a little bit of vitamin A in them. So, you know, if you want to try out this simple protocol, it might be a good idea to get a few different types of beans and just see what you like best.

Now, one thing she mentioned was the oxalates in beans being a concern, and she kind of said, you know, cooking beans can lower those oxalates. Um, if you don't know about oxalates, there is a lady on YouTube named Sally Norton, who I'm currently trying to get her on the show, but she's, uh, apparently in the midst of writing a book. She's done a lot of really interesting work on oxalates. The bottom line though is your body can handle a certain amount of oxalates like just fine. But if you are eating, you know, several really high sources of oxalates, you might start getting, you know, joint pain or histamine reactions or just other kinds of symptoms of too many oxalates. So for me, you know, I, I don't eat chocolate. I don't eat spinach, rhubarb, or any of the other, you know, really rich sources of oxalate. So, you know, some beans every day is really no big deal. But if you are eating a lot of these high oxalate foods, it is worth thinking about. Uh, a couple of other ones come to mind, almonds, um, sweet potatoes. Sometimes people who are on the keto diet, you know, they do a lot of sweet potatoes and almonds, they can, they can have too many oxalates. But I'll put a link in the show notes with a list of high oxalate foods, but you can just Google that and find a bunch of lists.

So anyway, that is all for now. Uh, next episode, I have Dr. Jason Haralak coming on, who is an expert in the microbiome. And when I say expert, I mean, you know, actually doing work with patients, expert who kind of has real, like, this works and this doesn't work kind of knowledge. It should be, should be really good.

As always, if you can help me out by shopping through my Amazon link on quackspodcast.com, that is very helpful. Doesn't cost you a thing and will throw a few bucks my way. If you are getting any value from these podcasts, so thanks so much for listening, everybody.

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