[Ep. 8] Healing Your Body With Beans | Karen Hurd (Nutritionist & Biochemist)

I decided, you know what? If I put her in the crib, she's on loading doses, high doses of phenobarbital. I put her in the crib, I'm going to come back not long, and I will find her dead in her crib because her lungs will have filled with fluid because she is poisoned. And I am not going to do this. And I picked her up, and I have two other young children, and we walked out of the house, and I did not return.

You are listening to the Holistic Life Navigation podcast. I am your host, Luis Mohica. I'm a holistic therapist, and my goal is to teach people how to find safety in themselves. I use nutrition, herbalism, self-inquiry, and somatic therapy to heal the body and mind of trauma. I have learned that each and every one of us has the ability to heal, to love, and to access all of the answers we're looking for. To do this, we first need to learn how to listen to our bodies and understand our minds. Let us begin.

So, before I get into today's episode, I want to sing you all a song. Karen Heard, who is my guest today, is lovingly referred to as the Bean Queen because beans are the foundation of our healing work. I'm also a musician, and I was driving around with that Barry Gibb song that Frankie Valli sang called "Greece." You know, "Greece is the word." It's the word that we heard. And in my head, my brain kept saying, "Beans are the word." It's the word that we heard. And my wife said, "You have to put that to music and introduce the episode with Karen Heard with that song." So, before I did, well, before I put it on the episode, I let Karen hear it. And Karen actually cried and said she was so humbled to be honored in song, which I thought was so lovely. So, um, that was the green light that I could share with you. So I hopped on my piano and I sang this little song.

[Music]

I'm tired of being told conflicting things about what I should eat. I just associate. Then came along this lady fair, who ate her beans every day till she reversed her gray hair. She's getting hurt.

[Music]

Unfold. Well, beans will be what you are eating.

[Music]

So, there's the song. And in a minute, it sums up a lot about Karen Heard, and you're going to learn a lot more today, a lot more. Karen Hurd is a very unique human being who I'm just, um, I just admire so much, and I've learned so much from. You know, I began my work as a nutritionist, and I began my work nutritionally counseling people on stress and trauma way before I studied somatic psychology, way before I was a, I was a trained trauma therapist. This is when I was 16 years old, and I was working at a health food store to help pay my car bills and buy guitars and autoharps and musical equipment that I wanted to spend money on. I was not the kind of teen that was spending money on alcohol. I was spending money on guitars. And so I was working at this health food store, and I would notice over time as people were coming in that their physical symptoms were correlated to emotional roots, old unprocessed traumas, even unconscious memories that would sometimes come through as their weight would go down, or as their inflammation was getting better, or as their rashes were healing. It was phenomenal. So I, you know, just followed the work I was doing, and that's what led me to somatic psychology because I was learning, "Wow, the body really holds memories that the, the psyche and the conscious completely forget about." So if I can work on people's memory stores and how their body's holding it and releasing it, we can actually release trauma. And then the food is this great foundation for creating almost a chemistry of safety, so the trauma work can go deeper and can actually have longer-lasting effects. I say all this because the past three or four years, I've been training in somatic therapy and I've been studying it. It's been my obsession, and I strayed a bit from nutrition. So I had been given Karen's name and her book and her podcast by so many clients in the last year. And, uh, recently, a client sent me a podcast with Lacey Phillips, which is a lovely podcast. I think it's called "Expanded" with Lacey Phillips, and there's an amazing interview on there with Karen Hurd. And I listened to it, and Karen brought back to me everything I loved and understood about food. How food is the medicine we're given on this earth. The, the deep root healing is the mind, you know, and releasing trauma from the body in my experience. But the medicine to maintain the body and maintain the mind is food. So without further ado, I'm going to give a little intro. Karen lives in the Midwest in Wisconsin. Her, her reception was not very good. Her connection was weak when we were zooming, so I had to turn the videos off, and then our connection became pretty consistent. So I lost the first 15 minutes of our interview, so I'm going to sum it up for you here. Karen Hurd is a nutritionist and biochemist who has helped thousands and thousands of people heal nearly everything and anything with nothing but whole foods. No supplements, no detoxes, no powders, nothing, just food. Not even herbs. Karen's work is a true gift for all of us, and anyone who needs it or finds it. That came from the most traumatic moment of her or any parent's life when her 18-month-old daughter was given six weeks to live. Karen shared the story with us. Like I said, lost connection, so I'm going to tell you the first part, and then I'm going to let her tell the rest. Karen served for four years as an officer in the Military Intelligence Corps. She resigned from the military to create a stable environment to raise a family. And her military training, in my opinion, was really where her work began because during her service, she studied and graduated from a Nuclear Biological and Chemical Defense course with honors. This meant that she really understood and was trained how to see the symptoms of neurological damage from chemical warfare. So why was this an integral part of her journey? Well, three years after she left, resigned from the army, the military, she would give birth to her daughter, Ruth. And by the time her daughter was 18 months old, the family had moved into a house with an old carpet that was infested with carpet beetles. They were everywhere. She explains they were just falling out of their shoes when they would dump their shoes out. There it was, an infestation. After trying everything, she very hesitantly, because of her training in chemical warfare, called an exterminator. And we know insecticides and pesticides, they're nerve agents. They are toxic to the nervous system. That's how they kill pests and insects. You know, a whole other subject, don't use them. Um, there are many very humane ways to keep animals out of your house and to catch them and release them. Um, but I digress. So she called the exterminator, and as the exterminator showed up, they did their work. The family left the house for hours, left all the windows open, everything was aired out because, you know, it's thought to be, well, once the air is, is clean again, then it's safe for the family to return. The family returns, and within 24 hours of returning, her 18-month-old daughter, Ruth, began having grand mal seizures. Now, a grand mal seizure is really intense. All four limbs are jerking, the mouth is foaming, the eyes roll into the back of the head. You eventually die from them if they just keep going, going. So they ran to the ER. The seizures were last, the seizures were each lasting around 10 minutes. And Karen told, or rather noted, that Ruth had every symptom that she had been trained in to protect her troops should they encounter a nerve agent. Ruth was showing every symptom of nerve toxicity, poisoning. And so the seizures, at this point, they're in the doctor's office, teachers are growing and getting bigger, peaking at 90 minutes. Now, the longest one she had, Ruth is begging the doctors to give her this medicine that they would have in the army that would, you know, detoxify this nerve agent. They didn't have any in the hospital, of course, because, you know, it was a hospital, it was an army unit, and the ER staff was panicking. They didn't know what to do. This 18-month-old was going to die. So the doctor said to Karen and her husband, "She's going to die really soon." You know, like, "Yeah, you have to just get ready for this." And in that moment, Karen and her husband held hands over their daughter, and her husband said, "Dear God, you gave her to us. You can take her home now." That just brings tears to my eyes because of that surrender to reality, to spirit, to God, to what is. Beautiful surrender. And in that moment, a miracle happened. Ruth stopped seizing. She just stopped. And the doctors rushed in and celebrated because now they could test her. See, they couldn't test her before because she was seizing so badly. They couldn't give her, they were giving her Valium, nothing would stop her. But now she was quite sedated. So they gave her a spinal tap, and the results came back with double pneumonia, which is a response to liver nerve toxicity. This is where I'm going to let Karen take it from here.

So she stopped seizing, and that was the moment where they could do the testing, and it came back she had double pneumonia, right? Double pneumonia. And so I said, um, I need to, we need to go. We need to investigate this. And so I had her transferred to St. Louis Children's Hospital, which is a, it's a very good hospital that is right there by us. And they had the entire team of neurologists, nine of them, look at her. And I, I asked them to do a cholinesterase level because cholinesterase is it's a liver, um, enzyme that's important when you break down poisons, and it would have been shown to be abnormal if she'd been poisoned. And they refused to do that as a simple blood test. They said, "No, she cannot be poisoned. She has to drink the poison." Just being exposed to it on the carpet. And they, and they did all the tests and said, "No, this is just a febrile seizure caused, you know, by her temperature rising." Well, her temperature got up to a whopping 100 degrees. You know, it was, and it, I said, "No, no, you have to look into this." And I will not forget the day. I was sitting in Ruth's hospital room, and they, she's on loading doses of phenobarbital, by the way, I should, you know, mention that, that's an anti-seizure drug. And the, the top neurologist at St. Louis Children's said, he, you know, looked me right in the eye and he said, "Mrs. Heard, you are barking up the wrong tree. This is not a poisoning. Go home." I went home. We're in the same house, same carpet. And Ruth, this is my little 18-month-old, she started with the same symptoms: pinpoint pupils, slight cough, diarrhea. All these are the standard, old things I trained all my troops in. And she then I decided, you know what? If I put her in the crib, she's on loading doses, high doses of phenobarbital. I put her in the crib, I'm going to come back not long, and I will find her dead in her crib because her lungs will have filled with fluid because she is poisoned. And I am not going to do this. And I picked her up, and I have two other young children, and we walked out of the house, and I did not return. And until I could get to the bottom of this, if she was poisoned or not. And so there I was on my own. You know, what do I do? I started to call every poison hotline, every poison control center. And they will all say, "Well, we've never heard of this. We never heard of this. Why don't you try the poison control center here? Why don't you try?" You know, when you, you know, you start this whole networking thing. Finally got a hold of a poison control center in Dallas, Texas, who said, "You really need to talk to Dr. Sheldon Wagner. He's a child toxicologist. This is all he studies. He's at the university in Corvallis." And so I called him. You know, I'm so used to getting, you know, this battery of receptionists, and you never get to the real person that you want to talk to. Actually, I got connected right away to Dr. Wagner. He said, "Absolutely, she could have been poisoned." And by by this time, I'd already called the exterminator and asked exactly what was the name of the chemical that they used on the carpet. The stir span 2E, and which is an organophosphate. It's chlorpyrifos, the active ingredient. And, um, which it was very clear. You know, he said, "Why hasn't your physician done this?" Is Dr. Sheldon Wagner saying, "Why hasn't your physician done a cholinesterase level?" I said, "I asked him, but they refused." He says, "You give me your physician's number immediately. In addition to that, I want you to cut out a 12 by 12 inch square, please, of carpet. I want one by her crib. I want one from the living room." And he said, "I want him on next day. I want you next day, Karen, on dry ice because this chemical breaks down and so then you, it has a certain, you know, it's going to be degrading." And so he said, "I have a lab and test." I had actually checked it, late, labs with St. Louis in St. Louis if they would test a carpet for the organophosphate, but they all wanted several thousand dollars. Wow. Wow. We didn't have any money. We're just trying to feed the family, of course. And so this doctor really hears you and agrees with you and wants to help you immediately, and he does. And he has a lab right there at the university. And so we did all of that. Oh, and I hung up the phone within 30 minutes. So I got, "Would you bring her in for clinic? Straight level. We're going to draw blood." And so I did. Well, the upside of it all was her cholinesterase levels were abnormal. She had been poisoned. Dr. Wagner tested the carpet. It was over 100 times the allowed level of organophosphate. She had, beyond the shadow of a doubt, been poisoned. Okay? So, by the way, St. Louis Children's Hospital chief administrator called me and apologized and said the neurologist should have listened to me. And, you know, it was just, it was a, it was a big deal. Oh my goodness, yes. And so then came the cleanup work. All the carpet had to be torn out. It had been hauled away by special waste hauler to a place in Illinois to where they do just toxic waste facilities. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency had to come in and use air sniffers to make sure it was clear. And, you know, it was just a big deal. Okay. So you think, okay, well, that's the end of it all. Oh, it wasn't the end of it all. It was just only the beginning because Ruth was very, very ill, and she wasn't, she wasn't getting any better. She was, everything made her react. She couldn't even walk through the grass and without breaking out in hives. Her face was covered with warts. Her hands, her arms were full of warts. This is because her immune system had completely shut down. I mean, she didn't have more. She's completely immunocompromised at this point. And how old is she at this point, Karen? 18 months. Who's still eating? Wow. Got it. This is all happening in a short amount of time. It was a long story, but I mean, this is all happening in just days, few weeks. This is happening. And so then I took her to specialists in St. Louis and said, "What do we do to recover her liver?" Because her liver enzymes were through the roof. I mean, her liver was shutting down. And the physician said, "She is going to die." That was her prognosis. That she had less than six weeks to live, and that she was going to die, and it would be because her liver would, would fail because her liver was trying to clear all this organo, right, phosphate and was failing to be able to do that. And so she was being poisoned to death. And so, but it was a long goodbye, you know, over these six weeks. It would have been. And I said, "No, there has to be some answer, some way to help her liver to clear this." We, we can, you know, the specialist said, "No, there's, there's not a way." And so then I took her to two specialists in Chicago. They had the same prognosis. Nothing we can do. I conferred on the phone with specialists in Dallas, Texas, and they had the same prognosis. There is nothing you can do. You have to accept the fact that she is going to pass. And then the specialist in St. Louis, this was the last visit I made to the physician there. He said, "Karen, um, we would really like to do liver biopsies as Ruth progresses through this deterioration because, um, we've never watched anybody die of organophosphate poisoning before. So we'd like permission to do that." I said, "No." Yeah, why? Yeah, biopsies are serious, they're painful. No. And I got this little 18-month-old who screams and cries because she, you know, they draw blood, you know how this is. 18-month-old. Absolutely. Yeah. And I said, "No. And you have no answer for me. All you want to do is chronicle her death. I have got to find a way for this child to live." So then I went to, I left Ruth with my husband, and and we, I went to WashU, Washington U in St. Louis. It's a medical university, and I went to the library. I have nobody to help me, you know. I, I've reached out and everybody's saying, "No, no, no, there's nothing that can be done. This is too bad. We're sorry for you," and all that. And so I went to the library. And then the library, I, I studied everything. And this is in the days of microfiche, you know. I love now, you can just type something in on your browser on YouTube, bring up all kinds of stuff. Go to Google Scholar, can read almost, you know, all scientific kind of data. But this is the days of microfiche. And I'm in this medical university library, and I read everything from the latest research by the National Institutes of Health to the latest snake oil remedies. And, and I began to cobble together what could detox her liver, you know? And so I came up with what I was going to give her. By the way, she wasn't eating. She would only nurse. She was, she could hardly lift her head. She would, she was declining very rapidly. So at this point, you knew something in you did? You all did? You know all along, or by this point, you realized her liver is recycling this after detoxing the liver? Like, when did that click for you? Well, I said, until I looked at the library and started to read about the enterohepatic recirculation, and that's become my signature piece and my, my practice. Yeah. Can you explain what that is? Yes, your liver clears out all, uh, fat-soluble waste. Organophosphates are cleared through the liver, and so are our hormones and anything else that is fat-soluble. And the majority of carcinogenic or toxic waste is fat-soluble. So this liver is this incredible organ. It filters all this out, and then it places it into a digestive fluid called bile. The bile travels down into your gastrointestinal tract, and there it's got a twofold purpose. One, it's to carry your truck, to carry out all your fat-soluble waste. But it also is a digestive fluid that helps you break down all your fats. And fats always have to be digested by other fats. It's in chemistry, it's like it combines with likes. Only fat, only a fat can digest another fat. So the bile is very essential in digesting the fatty acids that we eat. But the, the body is conservative. So it will recycle the bile so that we can use it again. And that happens in the terminal part of the ileum. The terminal part of the ileum is the last part of our small colon. So our bile is released from the liver through biliary ducts, which are just tubes, basically, that lead into your duodenum. The first part of your small colon. And your duodenum is just underneath your sternum and above your belly button. And then, then the intestinal tract moves down into your jejunum, and then finally into your ileum, as far as the small colon is concerned. And just before the small colon connects to the large colon, through a valve, it's actually the same tube, but there's a valve that separates called the ileocecal valve. But just on the, the part, the, the small intestine side of that valve, there's a place where absorption of fatty acids takes place. We don't absorb nutrients in the intestinal tract all along the intestinal tract. Certain things are absorbed in certain places. Fats are absorbed at the terminal part of the ileum. And because bile is made out of a fat, because remember, fat has to digest fat, the bile is also recycled. At the time that I did the research, they were saying 90 to 95% of your bile is recycled. Since then, further research has been done in these last, you know, this last five years, it's now a clear 95%. Wow. My percentage is recyclable because our bodies are conservative and, you know, going to reutilize the substance. Why wake more, make more when you can use, you know, use this again? Of course, conserve your energy. And I'm curious with just, so I make sure I'm following, and everyone else is following, it just, just to backtrack. So the liver releases bile, which is needed to digest fat, and in that bile is also the release of fat-soluble toxins. And then that's correct. And then when it gets to the colon, the body takes the bile because it says, "Well, I'm not going to use my energy to make more. I'm going to reuse what I have." But when it takes the bile again to store and then digest later, it's also storing those toxins again. So they're just recycling in the body. The toxins are never leaving. 95% of them recycle. And they quote that. Amazing. So you discovered that piece while you were reading, and then for you, it was like a light bulb moment? Exactly. It's just like, yeah, it has to have soluble fiber. Because then, then you have to fight, okay, well, how do you get rid of the bile? What will bind with bile? You have to have, it's got to have two properties. One is that it cannot be absorbed. It has to leave the colon. It has to go all the way into the large colon and out into the toilet in the form of bowel movement. Well, there's only one thing that does that, and that's fiber. Fiber is not absorbed at all. Nothing. I mean, 100% of all the fiber you eat is going to be dumped into the toilet. But not all fiber is the same. So you have to have a fiber that can bind with the bile. And I'm calling it bind. There's, in chemistry, we have lots of different bonds. You know, there's hydrogen bonds, and there's polar covalent bonds, and, and there's, there's Van der Waals bonds. But this is different. The soluble fiber has this very complex polysaccharide structure so that it makes this very tight mesh. It's a net. And so it's able to capture these larger micelles, the fat cell biomolecules, and capture those. And then if they're caught in the net, the net can't be absorbed. So whatever's caught in the net gets excreted along with the net. Wow. That's why the soluble is so specific. Yes. So you, people say, "Well, I'm eating vegetables." Well, that's nice, but vegetables have very little soluble fiber. They're mostly insoluble fiber. And soluble fiber does not have that complex polysaccharide net. Right. So, so the insoluble fiber is good just for creating form bowel movements, but it's not doing anything for the bile acids. Exactly. Interesting. So that was the second piece that was really, so the first piece was, okay, the liver, it, it filters out all these fat-soluble wastes and toxins. Fat being in the bile, digests your fat, recycles the bile and the toxins, 95% of them. And the only thing that removes those bile acids would be this net containing soluble fiber. So that was the, that was the real, like, one plus one equals two for you? Yes. So how did you get an 18-month-old to ingest soluble fiber? She wasn't happy about it. Who wasn't happy about anything? And so I put it in an oral syringe and I mixed it with a little bit of water, and then put all that in the syringe, and then I would, I put it down her throat. You know, it's an oral syringe, you just, you know, you bypass the tongue and just sort of like giving a cat a pill. Yeah, yeah, just force him to swallow it, which is what they call it. So anyway, but that's the way it gave it to her. And wow, what, what was it? What was, what were the first signs of healing? Within two weeks, she was already more alert, happier. The warts were disappearing. She wasn't breaking out with hives if she just breathed. I mean, you know, all the hives disappeared. And she, she was started to act like a normal 18-month-old again. Of course, I took her back. Her liver, her enzymes were falling down. So you can measure the functional liver through AST and ALT, alkaline phosphatase, their liver enzymes, and they're all coming into the normal ranges. And the doctors were astounded and amazed. And, and well, that was, I thought the end of it. Yay, Ruth is going to be better. You know, it's going to be okay. And then, you know, I talked to the doctors about what will be long-term, you know, results of, you know, this organophosphate poisoning, neurological results. And nobody knew. And so I mean, I can jump ahead and tell you right now, Ruth is now in her 30s. She was born in '88, so what does that make her? She's 32, right? So she's 32 years old, and she's fine and normal. She got a double degree, double major in college, and she's bright and intelligent, and she shows no signs of neurological damage. Although she is super sensitive to all chemicals. So I'm sure we just don't do that. And I, since then, I have studied lots and biochemistry and polymorphisms. And probably a polymorphism developed during that organophosphate poisoning. What's the polymorphism? In simple terms? It is a mutation in the DNA, and they're caused by either DNA replication errors or very commonly by chemical exposures or cigarette smoke or, you know, some. So her system is more sensitive because of these polymorphisms. Yes. Yes. That's interesting. So how long from the, again, the first syringe until there was, you would say, total healing? Like she was completely healed? What was the journey? How many months or weeks or years? It was just weeks. I was always in this, it's three weeks. That is phenomenal. Yeah. So just, sorry, go ahead. It was fast. It was really fast. I mean, that's a. And how long was she ailing before that? Um, it was total time, probably about four weeks. I'm sorry, they were giving her six weeks to live, or they were just saying it's going to be any time? Or giving her, they said no more than six weeks. Wow. So just to recap everybody, before we go into the actual, the protocol and the philosophy, um, you know, Ruth Stalter, was so over, not Ruth, Karen's daughter, Ruth, was so overcome with this neurotoxin from the carpet being sprayed for the beetles that her liver was shutting down. In four weeks, her liver was shutting down. They told her she had six weeks to live. In three weeks, out of those six weeks, she completely healed from soluble fiber. That is phenomenal. So now I have to fast forward to the, the beans, because that's where the fat, to me, the foundation of your work are the beans. They are, right? And there's something so perfect, in my opinion, from, I come from a macrobiotic background of beans. The, the way they're grown is so sustainable. They're so easy to grow. They grow anywhere. Their store really well. They're kind of like the best gift we could be given on this planet for survival. So the fact that your work encompasses them so much, I'm really excited to debunk the fears and the myths around beans. Um, so I first wanted to ask you, we choose beans because of the soluble fiber, specifically, is that correct? That is correct. They are our highest source of size. They are the highest source of soluble fiber in any foods that we have. And does that include bean flour, like bean pastas? Yes, it does. Wow. He does. Great. So if you had a, if you had bean pasta for dinner, that would count toward the soluble fiber that we're trying to get for this work? Yes. That's good for people to hear. And what I'm curious about is, what, what's the amount of beans? You say an average person who just wants to be healthier should be eating every day, or every meal? A half a cup. And that's for an adult, you know, 120 pounds or more, unless you're a big football player and you weigh, you know, 240 pounds and you have to have a serving. But generally, a half a cup at each meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Half a cup. That's really not much to ask for. No, it's not much at all. It's only 15 grams of soluble fiber, but that would keep you healthy. That's amazing. And then in that, what I'm curious about is, and I'm going to tell everybody in my experience that I've done the diet now for five and a half, six weeks. So I'm going to tell everybody my experience. But a couple things under the bean category I wanted to go into for you, really for our listeners. I have so many people who love beans, and so many people have fear of beans because, um, a book was put out, and there's a lot of concepts about lectins and phytic acid and such. And I want to know what your thoughts are about that, which people who are afraid of beans know about that. Yeah, it's just because, right? Lectins are a very important part of our innate immune system response. Lectins, um, act as one of the ways that we communicate, one cell to speak to another cell. There has to be a way to communicate by triggering receptor sites on cell plasma membranes, and lectins are one of the most important ligands. Ligand is something that is going to trigger a receptor site to do that. Without lectins, we will have no immune system. They are critically important. What else are they in? Lectins are in every food that grows from the ground, and every single food that grows from the ground. But they are in a higher concentration in legumes. That's why they, legumes get a bad rap. But lectins are our friend. They're not our enemy. What makes people think they're not good for us? What the lectins aren't good for us? Yeah, what's the concept or the science that makes people think lectins are, you know, keep you from forming bones or having mineral absorption or nutrient absorption? They see them as anti-nutrients, is what I've heard. Yeah, they say, yeah, they see them as anti-nutrients. But they, they just haven't looked at, they haven't looked at the entire biochemical process that's happening. Reflected, you know, they're just looking at it, "Oh, you know, it's going to bind with this or that." And for, you know, it's not that at all. It's just, it's just that they just don't know the whole process. That's what one thing I love about the work that you do, which is similar to how I come to the body, nutrition is, you can study something in a laboratory, you can study, let's say, a grain of rice, learn everything about the grain of rice. But the way it works with the body, there's even like a mystery beyond science. And I think that it's important when we talk about these, these quote anti-nutrients and these little isolated compounds when they're with the body, something transformative happens that might not happen in the laboratory. Oh, yeah, it does. It all the time. We'll look at the violet, phytates, and the oxalates, you know, that's something also that beans get a bad rap about. Well, you know, it's high with the phytic acid, and, you know, oxalates, and, you know, those are anti-nutrients too. And, yeah, but you forget the significant reduction, by the way, they're also very beneficial oxalates and phytates within the human body too. But you forget that there is a significant reduction of those as soon as you cook something. So no one eats a bean that you just harvested from the ground. Their heart is a rock. We can't, you know, you have to soak them and boil them. We have to, we have to get them to an edible place where we can, we can eat them. And so when you cook them, then you dramatically reduce the amount. I mean, and this is all in the scientific literature. I mean, I've got articles that are just, did just blow all these things out of the water. Just like, guys, go to Google Scholar. That's where you should always, you know, go to Google Scholar. Don't just Google it. You know, and then because then it's only going to bring up scientific studies, and then you have to look at each study to see, okay, what was the sample space? That means how many people were in the study? What were the parameters of the study? So you can see if it's a valid study or not. But so within that, how important is the sprouting or germinating process? Because I know when we soak beans, they're going to germinate a little bit. But when the necessity to sprout them, where are you with that? No, if you sprout a bean, then what happens is you convert the soluble fiber back into insoluble fiber. Oh, wow. Of course. Makes sense. Soluble fiber is actually the broken, the broken down insoluble fiber. If that's how we get, let's just take a pea. This will be a really easy example for everybody. Everybody likes to plant, plant peas in their garden in the early spring, and they're one of the first things that we harvest. And we take those fresh garden peas, and you know, we pop them out of the pod, and you know, we cook them up, and they're a vegetable. However, and because they have mostly insoluble fiber. However, if you left that same pea pod, or, you know, left your, your peas on the vine and did not pick them and left them there all the way into September, wherever you live in, you know, the world, leave them there to the end of harvest, then the pod gets all shriveled up and dried, and the little peas inside of it, they actually are not plump anymore, and they have changed states. They have become more soluble fiber than insoluble fiber. That makes so much sense. Yes. And so the more weathering, the more sun, the more wind, the more processed a bean is, the more soluble fiber it has because the insoluble fiber has been broken down into soluble fiber. That's incredible. So we soaking them? We want to do they're not sprouting, right? We want to soak them because you have to soak them, otherwise you, you have to get them to where they're tender enough that you can consume them. But then you don't sprout them because as soon as you have that sprout come off, that sprout is insoluble fiber, which was made from the soluble fiber. You know, that makes so much sense because I remember when I was, when I got into sprouting, specifically mung beans, they sprout so easily. I remember thinking, this is so magical. It goes from this hard stone that's really concentrated, and then it transforms into something less concentrated, like, like a vegetable. Turns into a vegetable. And so I didn't have the words for it, but when you just said that, that the soluble fiber is concentrated insoluble fiber, like propels that, that that light force out into becoming a vine, it's pretty cool. Exactly. I mean, it's all the chemical building blocks to make the insoluble fiber, right? That's amazing. We just converted back into what it came out. So then what about gas and bloating? Because I'll say this, I've actually never had that issue with beans ever in my life, but so many people have. Since I've done this diet, I actually started doing your diet right around the time where I was getting really bloated. I'm very thin, but I had gained 10 pounds just in my stomach. I was very bloated. Uh, for me, it was an adrenal response. I could feel there was adrenaline and cortisol building up. It wasn't really fat. And, um, when I started your protocol, my bloating just like vanished in two days, and I lost eight pounds in like a week, and I had so much energy, and I felt so, I felt so quiet, like in my mind. I keep calling it the quiet diet because my body just felt so relaxed and relieved. So you said something important in the course, I think, or maybe it was an interview about when someone's experiencing bloating, it's the initial detox, the release of hormones. What's that about? That interested me. Yeah, it's the, the bloating is actually just gas. Um, and also if you're having an adrenal response, it's the same thing you would have with pregnazone, which is one of, it's a cortical steroid, which is one of our adrenal hormones. We always put on fluid, and so we can gain weight. And so whenever you're having, you're more upset, you're worried, you're having an adrenal stress response, then you can have this fluid retention. But the bloating where you have gas, that is actually created by a fermentation process. Whenever we have two ways to digest food in the human gut, one is that we will use digestive enzymes, and also we have hydrochloric acid in the stomach that is also helping. And that's the default state of the human body. That's the way we're always going to digest our food is with our digestive enzymes. There is a second way to digest foods, and that's through the fermentation process. The fermentation process, however, is not the default state. You actually have to have a chemical signal to tell your body, "We're going to ferment food today, guys, instead of using the digestive enzyme route." Well, that chemical trigger is a hormone. Our hormones are chemicals. Everything's a chemical, by the way, one way or the other. But the hormones are, are catalysts. That means they create, they cause a reaction to happen. And hormones are cleared out of your bloodstream by your liver. Now, I didn't go into how the liver can degrade things, but it does degrade certain things to make them easily excreted. But in hormone, it very rarely degrades a hormone because it is so tiny. It is a very, very small molecule that you don't have to degrade. You just dump it in the bile, it's going to go on down. And so the more stress you're under, or the more adrenaline response, I mean, sometimes we, oftentimes we think of stress is always negative. We could be really happy. You could be doing, you know, I don't know, some, going to your favorite place in the world, and you're super happy about it, or something, and you're having an adrenaline response or an adrenaline high, you're going to be creating larger amounts of two hormones called epinephrine and norepinephrine. They're called our fight and flight hormones. They're also, I mean, just called adrenaline. And so that is going to be giving you your response to this emergency situation you may be in, or the stressful situation, or you're super high and happy about something. And those hormones, they catalyze your feeling that way. And then they are cleared by the liver and they're placed into your digestive fluid, bile. They are not broken down. And hormones, like all catalysts, when they trigger a receptor site on a cell, it, they're not used up. They trigger the, the reaction. The cell does the reaction, and then they release from the receptor site and they go over and trigger another reaction over here on this cell. And, and they just continue. They never get used up. They just continue to work. And so when you have large amounts of gas, they have been triggered by the hormones saying, "Hey, let's ferment foods today, guys. We're going to just skip the digestive enzyme route. We're going to ferment foods." Oh, wow. In the process of fermentation, most of us are very well aware, fermentation always, not sometimes, always has gas. You always release gas. Most of the times it's methane, which is CH4. And so you will release gas as, and then it's caught in this closed space, your, your intestinal tract. And gas is more voluminous. It takes up a lot of space. And so what happens to you? You blow up like a little balloon, you know, you're, you're, something starts to poop, you know, and you'll look like you're four months pregnant by the end of the day, you know? So it's just gas. And then you have, we have two ways to get rid of this gas. One, you can burp it up, or two, you pass it as flatulence. And now, is it safe to say that if someone has a lot of gas and bloating when they start up upping their soluble fiber intake, that's because it's showing them how much adrenaline they have in their system? How many hormones are lying around? Like, is that, is that a correlation that distinct? It is. If you are having more gas, it is because you have more hormones. You are clearing. You, you do have more hormones. That's just a fact. Now, and people say, "Well, when I eat beans, they give me gas." It wouldn't matter what you ate. You can have gas. I mean, you're going to ferment whatever you're eating. However, you have to consider that some things are more easily fermented than others. And beans are one of the most easily fermented foods. And the reason why it's, we already know the reason is because the soluble fiber in beans are attracted to these very molecules that are carrying the hormone that ferment the food. And they're going over there and grabbing them, right? And smoking while they're there, grabbing them. Oh, they get fermented along the way. Yep. So, I mean, people who have gas, they can eat no beans at all, and they'll find out they're still having gas. So, okay, what's causing your gas? If you're not eating beans, what's causing your gas? Well, your fermentation process is causing the gas, which was caused by the hormones. That's what's causing the gas. And you ferment whatever you get. But because beans are the most easily fermented food, beans get the blame. It's all wrong. Doing so much sense. Fix it. Because the beans have the soluble fiber to carry out the bile, because in that bile are the hormones that are creating the fermentation. So if you eat the soluble fiber, you throw away the hormones, and then they don't recycle. So there's less hormones, and your next release of bile coming down in your gut, and then over time, you don't have any gas at all. Bam, bam, everybody. Karen, nothing but net. Karen Heard. I mean, that's like so, it's like slam dunk, right? Because I love that. I've had so many clients in the last two months who started doing this, and the, some of them, the first couple days, just like you said, because beans ferment easier because of the amount of carbohydrates, they feel this, this, they have more fermentation, they have before, let's say, um, slight discomfort. Literally everyone so far has been like, two to three days, it completely goes away, and they feel less bloated than they ever had in their life. So I'm seeing this happen with people on one person after the other. It's amazing. So I can personally attest to it, but I've seen it. Um, fats, you know, the thing that, oh my goodness, the thing that you say is so controversial is coconut oil. Oh, yeah. Oil is just as bad as butter. And that's huge. I was, that's the biggest learning curve I've had with all your work was coconut oil because I was a coconut oil fiend. I mean, I had it on everything with everything and everything. And so I wanted you to talk about coconut oil really briefly because I'm so interested.

In this salt compound, and this piece about adding this salt with the fat, and how that actually regenerates your cells, and for you reversed your gray hair, your hair is like brown. It's amazing. Yeah, well, you know, we just had to jump off because I, I'm hoping the communication is better. Much better. But you were looking at me today, you know, today's date. Where are we now? You know, August the 6th, the year 2020. I am 62. We'll be 63 in October, and I have never once dyed my hair, and I'm not going to because I want people to see how I age. You know, women's aging very well. Everybody, her hair is so rich and brown. It's amazing. Your skin's nice and clean and and full of um, it looks like it's full of, I want to say volume, but you look hydrated. Like you're very vital for almost 63. Yep. And I am not overweight. I know you can't tell because I didn't stand up, but I'm, you know, five feet six at 120 pounds. You know, I'm just saying I'm fine.

So, so what's the deal with the saturated fat in the coconut oil? What does it do to the cells? I caused so many problems. Um, I, I, I know you want me to be brief, so I'm trying to put this as briefly as I can. It's okay. We'll do our best. Okay. We have in fats, fats are long, long molecules of carbon atoms. There's a, there's a head which has a carbon and some an oxygen and some hydrogens up there, but then there's this long, long tail just stretched out of carbons. And carbon is an atom that has to have four bonds. It has to. It just has to. This is like two plus two equals four. Carbon will have four bonds, and so it will bond with the carbon on either side because it'll just, think of a chain. So you've got two bonds, a carbon on either side, but then there's two bonds that have to be made. Well, they can be made with hydrogens, and that's what happens in fats. They're going to bind to a hydrogen. Hydrogen is another atom, and so when you have a saturated fat, every single ability, every single bond that the carbon has available, there will be a hydrogen attached to it. A saturated fat means it's saturated with hydrogen atoms. That's all saturation means.

So what's an unsaturated fat? An unsaturated fat is this carbon chain. Somewhere, some places along the chain, the carbon is actually doubly bonded to the carbon next to it. So it's got to have four bonds. So it's got two with the carbon, one carbon next to it, and then on the other side, it's got the third bond to a carbon, and then it's only got one hydrogen attached to it. And so it's an unsaturated fat because you could bring in another hydrogen if you could break that double bond, which we can, and then you could make it into a saturated fat. Well, so why are saturated fats so bad? Because saturated fats don't like to play. In chemistry, we're always looking for reactions that will, that can react. Well, saturated fats don't play. They don't like to do chemical reactions. They're extremely stable. All they'll do is they'll be stored on you as a fat cell in case you need energy. Then you will be able to have the energy to burn because we can use that as an energy source. But to be able to use a saturated fat, it can't stay in a saturated fat format because all the bonds are taking up. It's happy. It's not going to make any chemical reactions. So we have got to make it reactive. How do you do that? You have to create a double bond. Well, how do you create a double bond? You have to convert the saturated fat back, not back, but into an unsaturated fat. And you do that. Liver. We actually, it's the mitochondria of the different cells in your body.

As I was going to say, what, I'm sorry, what happens to the cell? What does the cell have to go through as a result of that conversion? It has to go through the process of oxidation. Um, and when you oxidize something, then for a split moment in time, that carbon atom is going to only have three bonds, and it wants a fourth. And so you temporarily create a free radical. They're called oxidative radical, oxidative species. And that free radical is going to do anything to grab another bond. And so it's drives itself into other, other molecules and escaped cells. If it is at a, a strong enough velocity, it can actually penetrate the plasma membrane. Wow. So there's a destruction of the cells' DNA? Um, yes. It's destructive. Oxidation is always destructive. I mean, it just is. But that's what we have to do is to convert a saturated fat into something that we can utilize. We have, we have to go through that oxidative process. And then your unsaturated fats, we already, we already have double bonds. I mean, we have, you know, an omega-3 oil, you have a double bond between the third and fourth carbon. This is fun. You guys can use this in the future if you, you can, you know, wow your friends. And they'll say, yeah, well, omega-3. You say, yeah, there's a double bond between the third and fourth carbon. What's the third and fourth carbon from the omega end? Omega is the end of the molecule on the fat molecule, and you count in the carbons. One, two, three. Okay. I'm between the third and fourth carbon, and there's a double bond. If you have an omega-6, you count in between the sixth and the seventh carbon, there's a double bond. If you have an omega-9, it's between the ninth and the tenth carbon. You have a mega bond.

So this is where we, um, boost about is that they were here. I'm sorry, they were one. This is where people, they, they hear this. But it doesn't matter with coconut oil because it's a medium chain. Right. Right, right. I'm sorry, it's still saturated. Still saturated. Right. It doesn't matter how many, uh, the chain is just telling us how many carbons are in the chain. Well, when you look at the good fish oils, they have over 20 carbons in the chain. And these medium chains have somewhere about 10 or, you know, 10 to 12, somewhere in upper 10 to 15, even. But in your are normal fats that are like your omega-6, that's there are 18 carbons. It doesn't matter how many carbons are in the chain. It just matters if they're doubly bonded somewhere already because then they can make a chemical reaction occur. Right. So if it's a, so just to, to summarize that, if it's a saturated fat, your cells have to go through oxidation, and they have to go through some possible, some plasma DNA damage, create free radicals, which we know we don't want. The body, if we don't want it for aging, we don't want it for cancer, we don't want it for inflammation, dementia, Alzheimer's, all those things. So that's what's happening with saturated fat consumption. Unsaturated fat consumption, the cells of, what I'm hearing, they stay intact, and you get all the benefits of healthy fats. Exactly. That's awesome.

And essentially, just for anyone that wants to start incorporating this, an unsaturated fat is anything that's liquid. Is that right? Is the easy way to go by it? Yeah, liquid at room temperature. Liquid at room temperature. Got it. And now, where does, what, what happens when you add the salt? Because you, I'm pretty sure you say fats always need to be taken in with salt. Is that correct? It's best because then they're going to be, you, you can make the chemical reactions happen. How interesting. So it's about making the chemical reactions happen faster because salt as a catalyst? Yeah, it's just because there's a double bond, you know, to make a chemical reaction happen. We have this double bond between two carbons. Well, we have to break the, the double bond is called the pi bond, and you break that pi bond. And it's not p-i-e like a, like an apple pie, it's p-i, you know, and the Greek alphabet. So you break the pi bond, and then as immediately, if another molecule, functional group is what we call, and we'll come in and attach to that, and we're going to make a good hormone out of it or another good substance because your body is trying to form that. But to break the bond in chemistry, to break a bond, you have to put in some energy source. It doesn't, bonds just don't, you know, spontaneously break. You have to put in energy and break it. And so when you eat salt, salt is sodium chloride, and when you, when we consume it, it will go into us and it will ionize. That means that we'll separate the two atoms, sodium and chloride will separate from each other, and then they are charged particles. The sodium is a positively charged particle, so it's going to just be a spectator ion. It really doesn't get involved in anything. But the chloride has a negative charge. We're talking about it's got an extra electron. Electrons. So just think of energy. This is what's going to make something happen. So we have this electron on the chloride ion that then is able to act as, we call them electron wells. It's a, it's an energy source that is able to break the pi bond so we can bring in the functional group and make a cortical steroid which reduces inflammation or make a hormone or whatever.

That's amazing. So you actually, for having the salted good fats, you're actually, um, increasing your, your hormone health, and you're reducing inflammation, you're reducing aging. Yes. Yes. That's incredible. And that includes like salted nuts. That includes salt and nuts. Absolutely. Now, is that a roasted salted nut or a raw salted nut? It can be either one. Maybe either one. No, people are worried about when you roast that, you're going to oxidize fat. Oh, no, no. To oxidize that fat, it has to undergo high, high temperatures, and we can't do it in an oven or in a normal kitchen. So it's interesting. You have to, you have to do this, and you know, it has to be extremely high to oxidize like that. And over time, it can oxidize like if you leave whatever oil on your shelf, you know, I got a bottle of oil, olive oil, it's been sitting there for 25 years. Yeah, you should, you know, smell it before you eat it because it will have oxidized. Sure. Over time. Yeah. Over time. But I mean, you're talking about a salted roasted nut that you know, we're not talking about it's been there for 20 years. If it has, you can always tell when a fat is oxidized. Oh, yes, you can. It stinks. Rancid. That stale taste is in your mouth for hours. Yes. And so, I mean, people, if you smell it or taste it, please spit it out. You know, it's rancid. It's bad.

So, so just like with the beans, how you said there's this 45 grams of soluble fiber daily for a healthy person, you know, what is it for fats? Actually, it's 15 grams. It's fine. 15 grams per day. I'm sorry, I misunderstood. Yeah, because it's a half a cup of beans at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So there's a five grams of soluble fiber in a half a cup. Oh, it's even less than that. It's even better. Okay. So 15 grams a day was for the beans. My, my mistake. For the beans. Yeah. What about the fats? Is it, do you, is there actually, do you believe people need a certain amount of fat? Is it optional? What is that like? Well, fats are really good for you. They are optional. I mean, we get fats that are naturally occurring in our foods too. Avocado, you have fats. Many people do eat, you know, some, you know, cashews or, you know, pecans or whatever they're eating. I mean, we are getting fats in our, and our proteins. And so, I mean, we have a fat coming in. If you have certain conditions, though, I will recommend that you eat a certain amount of fat so that you can get a higher hormonal output so that we can reduce inflammation, like people with arthritis or something like that. So if you have inflammatory issues, a high amount of good salted fats is really proper. A deal. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's good to know. Is there a certain amount or does it really depend on the person? It depends on the person and how severe their situation is. So, yeah, if you're, and then, and then you have to take in, I haven't taken the whole person. What if they had Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, and they also had rheumatoid arthritis? You cannot tell that person to go eat a bunch of nuts because they will have diarrhea. Blow out. Right, right, right, right. It really depends on the person. Absolutely. Absolutely. Fix the gut. I mean, sometimes you have to take things instead. First of all, we heal the gastrointestinal tract. Then when that's healed, then we bring in the good fats. That's nice.

And I'm hearing as well, it can be as simple as your salad dressing. You know, if you put olive oil or avocado oil or sesame oil in your salad and you salt that, you're getting your good fats. You can incorporate it so easily with your meals. Yes. Right. Yeah. Yes. So then, okay, so this is the other question. I'm looking, we have 20 minutes. We're doing good. Um, I'm curious about, so the protein, my big question with protein is, there are people who are just not going to eat animal protein. I know. And a lot of people writing to me asking me, you know, please ask Karen, what, what does she say? None in terms of is it healthy or not? But if you're refusing to eat animal protein of any kind, what would you deem the healthiest way to get protein as a vegan? Not the ideal for you, but the healthiest? Well, it's going to be through your legumes, but they're missing one of the essential amino acids. So you have to combine them with the grain, but then you have a limiting factor. So, limiting factors are, we're looking at methionine and tryptophan. In these, these are the two essential amino acids. Um, and I should back up. So, you know, what an essential for your listeners know what an essential amino acid is. We have 20 amino acids, and they are, they form every single enzyme, catalyst, cell in your body. Nothing. Everything is going to be your, everything is going to be predicated upon your consumption of amino acids. So there's 20 of them. Out of those, nine are essential. That means we have to get them from our diet. There is no way your body can manufacture them. The other 11 can be manufactured by your body, and they can, they will be manufactured out of the nine essential amino acids you have. But if you are missing an essential amino acid, that means some of your cells will not be formed because whenever we replicate a cell, the DNA is copied, and it's copied onto what's called a messenger RNA, and then that RNA, then there's these three nucleotide sequences that code for a very particular amino acid. And so you will have an alanine that's needed, or you'll need a methionine. Let's use methionine and tryptophan right now. And so you need a methionine, but what happens if there's no methionine available? Then that protein will not be made. Therefore, that enzyme, that catalyst, whatever we are trying to make, it can't be made because there is no methionine available, or there is no tryptophan. And so when you eat complete proteins, that means you're getting a protein that has all nine essential amino acids. Your base is recovered. You're going to have everything you need. But if you're doing the food combining, the problem is is that what if you don't have enough rice for your beans or enough beans for your rice? Then you have a limiting factor. You can only have, you only have so much tryptophan or so much methionine. And so then, yeah.

Anyway, is there a grain that you recommend? This is where I run into people that, well, no, they're all of them. I mean, they all have. Okay, I wasn't sure there was one that had more or the other. He said rice is the best to pair with beans. No, they're not that fast. I mean, any of the grains will work. Quinoa, or you're doing, you know, couscous, or whatever you're doing. Any of the grains work. Got it. And so what we want to do, and but the person needs to know that they're, they're going to be more tired than they could have been. This is the biggest complaint I hear from vegetarians is that why am I, why am I always tired? And, and, and it's because they don't have all the essential amino acids present that they need. So if a vegan or vegetarian is experiencing that kind of exhaustion, that's somewhere it could be coming from. Yeah. And, and then there's certain problems that just will not respond. Mental health disorders, anxiety, depression. It is so dependent upon your consumption and the complete proteins and the efficient proteins. You know, because you say, well, I'm combining, but you have a limiting factor. But you know what if you've got all the limiting factor, which you would never be able to calculate? I mean, it's such a difficult calculation because we have nitrogen bases, and it is really hairy. But what we, what we do is we look at efficient proteins. And I always encourage people that are, you know, that are vegetarian or, you know, don't want to eat meat. Would you consider eggs? And they'll say, well, you know, we don't want to, you know, we don't want to eat eggs from these chickens that are all pinned up. Well, there's lots of people that sell free range eggs, you know, just have your own chickens in your yard, you know, and you just, they're not abused or anything, and just eat the egg. And the egg, if it's not fertilized, I don't want to eat anything that's alive. And I get that. I'm not opposed to that at all. I understand. But if you have an unfertilized egg, it's not a life. It's just, it's just a protein. It has to be life. You have to have a sperm and an egg. And this is, I think for, I think for the just the sake of an egg is very. I'm glad we're having the discussion because like I said, there's so many people that are listening to this are going to be on both sides of the equation. Um, and I want everyone just to hear us. They can be informed to make a decision. And I think, um, those who are more plant-based or especially the vegan lifestyle, it's more of a, it's more of like, um, almost like a religion. So it goes beyond even the idea of, well, nothing was harmed or this wasn't fertilized. This is a byproduct versus life. And just comes down to they don't even want to use anything that an animal was, was used to make. And so I want them to just hear from you like when you said about the combining, how it's just helpful to know, okay, well, if that's the, that's the route you're gonna go because it feels better to your spirit, your emotions, or your religion, or your lifestyle, um, at least bring your grains in with your, yeah, with your legumes. That's the best you're gonna be able to do. And I think for some people, they have to be consumed at the same time. I have to consume at the same time. Okay. That's good to know. I think for some people, it's, uh, that kind of lifestyle, like a vegan lifestyle, really works. Either their bodies feel really good, they feel really alive. I've counseled plenty of people who are very old and they're vegan, they're great. I've counseled people in their 40s that aren't doing great. It really depends on where they're at. I find it kind of much more widespread. Um, but this is, this is helpful. Like I said, I want the full information.

Now, the part that that really interests me, there's so much. I mean, I need four hours with you. So there's so much I want to ask you. Um, I'm thinking, I guess this is the, I guess what I'm going to ask you because we're coming to a close shortly, is what I really love about your work is you say things like, I've heard you say things like, um, environmental toxins and food chemicals are inconsequential compared to metabolic waste. And that's a really new concept for people because what I hear is when you're giving your body exactly what it needs, the mechanism and system of the body is so efficient and effective that it just doesn't, it can almost handle anything going on outside of it, including, uh, pesticides. Yes. And I just want people to hear that from you about your belief, not even your belief, but what you've seen in the lab, what you've seen in your practice for 30 years of that being true. Yeah, the greatest waste that we have, the most in volume, the greatest amount that we have, is our own metabolic waste. Whenever we go through a chemical reaction, and we're going through huge amounts of chemical reactions per nanosecond, massive amounts, there's always a waste product. I mean, we know that matter is neither created nor destroyed. And so what happens when we turn one thing into another, then we have, we have a waste product. And our liver and our kidneys too, but we're focused right now on the liver because of the soluble fiber and the beans. And the liver is dealing with the fat soluble waste, which is the most toxic. Our liver is always taking these waste products from all these metabolic reactions and clearing them. And they are the vast majority. We're talking in the high 90th percentile. That's not 99.9. I mean, that I could have to actually research, but, you know, it's that high. I mean, it was just because we're having all these chemical reactions every day. So then we have something that we drink out of a plastic bottle, and we're worried about the bisphenol A, or in a can, or something like that. You know, whatever the chemical is, it is a very small amount. And that is just like, uh, it's just like batting a little fly off of you. You know, it's just like, oh, that's easy for the liver. It's just like, we clear that, no problem. Because the liver will take that and clear it in comparison to metabolic waste. You're saying in comparison? It's just like, yeah, this is the tiniest amount. You know, unless you're overwhelmed, like, you know, when Ruth was poisoned, I mean, we were overwhelmed by the way. We were all sick. I mean, I didn't even mention that we were all extremely ill too. But because she was the lowest body weight, she is the one who experienced the worst symptoms. But, you know, if you're overwhelmed by a huge, I mean, anybody can be overwhelmed if you're attacked by an organophosphate. But just a normal life, you know, breathing in, you know, the air pollution, and you know, you know, whatever it is. And so our liver easily deals with that. If we can be clearing it, and you eat beans three times a day, you're going to be clearing these things.

It's amazing. I just think that's, I love that stance on it because I mean, it's not like a pro-chemical stance. I get that. But I love that it's, it comes down to understanding how, how efficient the body is. And more so, how accessible your work is. Because if you're someone that has a family of four, five, six, you have a low income, the thought of having to go out and do like a juice fast or buy a bunch of organic superfoods or smoothies, it's completely prohibitive. So the fact that you can go out and buy a can of beans, you know, or dried beans, which like two dollars will last you a week. I mean, they're so affordable. Uh, and you don't eat all organic, or you could be living next to a cornfield that gets sprayed every day, you know, whatever your situation is, your body has the ability to like, to get rid of all those environmental toxins. Because I think it's beautiful. I mean, I, I, I eat all organic. I have for last decade or longer. I prefer it. There's times I've been on tour as a musician where I'm in like, I don't know, North Dakota, and all I can do in this little town is eat, you know, garlic broccoli from the Chinese restaurant. And, um, it's fine. I deal with it, right? But my body has never gotten sick. I think because I've kind of eaten this way that you're suggesting, and now much more so, but my liver's being able to process. Is my point. And so I, I think I like that people could have the freedom to be in the world with the kind of world we have and navigate it with clarity if the body's really working to its best, even if you can't eat organic all the time. So that's really good to hear. Even though I am, I'm a supporter of organic farms and just even homegrown, right? Oh, absolutely. And all that is wonderful. But I mean, like you said, if you're in this town and whatever obscure place you know, you may not have any choices. And, and for those people who don't have the money, maybe because organic generally tends to be more expensive, but not always. But, you know, we will still, we're going to be okay. That's right.

So we have eight minutes, and I, I want to ask, could I do like a flash round of questions that I got from people? Would you be open to that? Sure. Awesome. Okay, so the first question is, can I eat nuts with my rice? Of course. Okay. Because I think they're thinking of the soluble fiber in the beans. Oh, yeah, that related to the rice or not? Oh, yeah, the rice doesn't. I mean, absolutely. The rice doesn't have any fat, and we don't have to separate fats from beans. A lot of people get confused about that, except for some very, very specific health conditions. And for some other very specific health conditions, we need to eat fat with beans. That's good to know. Okay. Yeah. What, what in particular would make you want to separate fats from beans? Like, what particular health conditions? If we really needed to clear a lot of hormones rapidly. So let's say you have severe acne or severe PMS. This is a, this is a high hormonal situation. Then you want to get rid of as many hormones as possible. If you eat your soluble fiber, your beans, and you're also having, you know, you sauté your beans in olives, avocado on the side, the soluble fiber and the beans are going to bind with oil in that avocado or in that oil, you know, you sauté them. So there's not as much soluble fiber available to bind with your bile that's carrying out these hormones because hormones are carried out of the body by the bile because hormones are made out of fats. And so then you're not able to get it was rid of. So only if you had severe acne or severe PMS, and it's like, well, you know, you want to get over your symptoms more rapidly, we just won't eat our beans with the fat. That's it. Just that. Makes so much sense. Okay. Uh, how long until my hair will stop being gray? [Laughter] Well, I just, I mean, I was looking at you a few minutes ago. I didn't see any gray hair on you. But anyway, that's not for me. This is from reader, uh, viewers. Okay. People wrote in. I said, I was interviewing you. It, will it take several months? Because hair grows slowly. And there is another mitigating factor that's big in hair loss that comes in, and that's stress. And we cannot just say this, the good oils alone are going to fix this. You know, the good salted oils, they certainly are going to take you a long way down the street. But if you're under stress, I mean, your job is in jeopardy, or you're having, you know, marital difficulties, or, or you are an exerciser. I mean, you're out there, you know, running three days a week, or, you know, lifting weights or whatever you're doing, the adrenaline. Yeah, pumping the adrenaline. Um, we're not really going to go very far. It's so interesting. Yeah, we have to take in the whole picture. So if you were, you know, you basically have a stress-free life, you know, and you're not exercising, where you can see, you can see, you can see it growing in. I mean, because everybody loses so many hairs, and you see, oh, look at this hair loss. This this inch of it is brown or whatever. Oh, it's so cool. Yeah, hair color is. And then there, and look, the rest of the hair after it's gray, it's turned back to brown. Yeah. So it's just a matter of a few months. It's fastest because the melanocyte, that's what colors your hair, is they always can be repaired. Some, they're an amazing cell. And that's, that's what produces the pigment. And so they will repair very easily if we could just get enough of the good fats in there to reduce the inflammation on the melanocytes so that it can do its job. Make nice, nice. I love that. That's exciting.

Um, okay, so someone asked about pasta. We already said that's okay. The bean pasta. What about bean chips? I mean, chips are great. Beautiful. That works too. Now, do you know how I, I don't remember if you said earlier if I asked you, but bean chips and pastas, how do you know how much you should be getting versus the half cup of whole beans? Yeah, you just look at the, the package that you're buying. Okay. For each meal, we're trying to get five grams of soluble fiber. And it's going to be listed probably as dietary fiber. How much is, you know, insoluble, how much is soluble? If you're eating bean pasta, bean chips, it's going to be soluble fiber because that's it's made out of a bean. It's going to be soluble fiber. So it'll say on the package that this many chips gives you this much dietary fiber. So that's incredible to know. Eat this many chips to get five grams. Got it. So you look at the serving on the back. Whatever is going to give you five grams is what you make. Um, or eat, which is incredible because those of you listening that want to incorporate this with your children, bean chips are a really easy way to incorporate this, and bean pasta. There's so many good brands of them out there. That's awesome.

Okay, with two more. Um, I only gained weight above and around my belly button, and my digestion feels off. I feel bloated and have been told it's an issue digesting fructose. What do I do? I don't know that it's an, an issue involving fructose. Um, and first of all, you have to know how you can get into the whole fruit thing. Um, but it because it's high in sugar. And so you're going to have a hormonal release whenever you eat large amounts of sugar. In it includes fructose, fruit sugars. You are going to have an adrenal response. And that adrenal response can cause this weight gain, just like we were talking about at the beginning of this this interview, you know, when we're under stress, we can put on weight, just like with any cortical steroid or adrenal hormone. And so when you're eating fructose, is it really a fructose malabsorption, you know, digestion issue, or is it because, because fructose is very rapidly absorbed? I can tell you, I don't think it's going to be malabsorption. It's going to be, you have an adrenal response. That's why you've got the weight. Beautiful.

Um, last question. I would love to know how Karen developed her self-discipline that allowed her to forge her path. Well, I guess I was born a fighter. I mean, you know, you have these different personality types. Well, I'm the, you know, I'm the, the cleric fighter. I mean, if you, and when you threaten my child, then yeah, that will do it. Mama bear, that'll do it. You know, and so that's what started. But I've always been a fighter. Um, and, and I've always loved science. And, uh, and so I've always been a student of that. And I will never stop learning. The day you stop learning is the day you might as well lie down and die. You know, we got to keep going. And so the self-discipline, I mean, I just, these things are important. And so I cannot, I cannot stand by. You know, if you saw a child drowning in a lake, you don't just stand by and just hope somebody's gonna just jump in and save them. No, I'm jumping in and I gotta help save these people. And that's what's motivated me through these 30 years is people suffer, and they're mostly suffering for no reason. They just, except for a lack of knowledge. And so I want them to know. I want them to get better. You know, that's a perfect way to end this because when I think of what you've been through with your daughter, and like I said in the beginning, you turned your trauma into wisdom because that experience came to you. And thank goodness it came to you because it could have come to someone that says, oh, my daughter's gonna die in six weeks. I better prepare for that. And you heard that, and that gave you the motivation to research. You know, you were driven by some other force to go find that information. And this very simple information you found is so profound, and how it changes, really, every, I mean, from what I'm reading of your work and seeing with my own clients and myself, it changes your whole system, regardless of what your imbalance is. It gets to the root of rebalancing the body. And it's simple. It's affordable. But because of that experience you had, I imagine you have such an empathy for anyone's suffering. So you can re, right, you can really connect to them and create safe space and understand what that feels like. And then without a doubt, that's why people are drawn to your work, and that's why it works. Um, I, I couldn't, I can't thank you enough for joining me and being here. Um, I'm going to discuss more after I stop the recording about where they can find you and sign up for your classes. And, um, I would love to have you back to to go into other subjects and maybe just focus on adrenaline one time and such because there's so much information there. Um, thank you so much, Karen, for joining. Welcome. You're welcome. And I'll, happy, happy to come back. So I'd like to do a brief review for everyone listening because Karen's work is so profound. She's obviously a genius in her understanding of food and chemistry, and she talks to us like we're biochemists. And I'm lucky enough to understand a lot of this because I've studied nutrition. So I'm going to make it really simple for me and everyone listening, okay? But before I do that, I just want to give my own personal testimony to how the diet has impacted me in the last year. I gained about 10 pounds. I've always been around somewhere between 150 and 155, and I gained like, I was like 165, and I was actually going toward 170. And for me, I knew it was adrenaline. I knew it was from overworking, from sitting a lot, you know, as a therapist, we're on our asses all the time. So eventually, I want to, you know, create walking therapy where I can move around. But for now, anyway, I was noticing this, this bloating and this fat building up around my stomach, which I really haven't had since I was probably 12 or 13 when I was actually quite overweight, like 50 pounds overweight. And I started, no, I started thinking, I took her course, actually. I signed up for her course, which I'll explain at the end here, and I listened to everything she said. I wrote notes. I noticed where all the dots were connecting in my own work that I do, in my own diet. I followed, and I realized what was really being asked of me was to quit sugar, to quit fruit, believe it or not, and to add half of a cup of beans to all my meals. So I did that. And oh my goodness. Oh, and the other part was I turned off my alarm clock, which was a huge shift. I was waking up at five AM every day from an alarm, and when I turned off my alarm clock, I was waking up around six or seven and getting this rest that my body really needed, especially from doing eight to 10 hours a day of trauma therapy with with individuals, you know, four days a week. It's a lot of output. So I wasn't giving my body the rest needed. And that was the first healing. I was experiencing this deep rest. I discontinued dark chocolate and any caffeine as well. And this is the diet I did. So every morning, I have a bowl of mung beans and a big salad with kale and mescaline and smoked dulse and tomatoes and a clove of crushed garlic. And my dressing is a teaspoon of flax oil and a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar and some salt. That's breakfast. 90 minutes later, as prescribed on the protocol I got when I did the course, is I eat a quarter to a half a cup of salted roasted cashews. Then at lunchtime, I have a macro bowl, which is any grain with any bean of your choice, except for soy, steamed greens, steamed carrots, and sauerkraut. 90 minutes after that, I have a carob bar, which I love. There's no sugar. It's just the powder of the carob, the carob bean, or more salted nuts. Sometimes I'll have a salted nut butter with celery, which is really delicious and hydrating. Then for dinner, I have chickpea tempeh, which our friend makes locally, with salad, grain, and more steamed vegetables. And that's it. I'm done for the day. In two weeks, I lost eight pounds. In four weeks, my digestion was the best it's ever been, probably in over a decade. No bloating, tons of energy, glowing skin. My Lyme's disease symptoms vanished. I recently got a test. My Lyme's is completely negative. It's nowhere to be found. I feel so balanced and grounded, and it's all been through food. I started incorporating herbs back into my diet because I've studied herbs a lot, and I know there's a difference between nutritive herbs and purgative herbs. And a big foundation of Karen's healing work is we don't want to be stimulating the body to make adrenaline because every time we're stimulating the body to make adrenaline, we're actually upping our metabolic waste toxicity, we're gaining weight, we're creating more cortisol, and we're getting inflamed in the intestinal tract. So the less adrenaline we're able to produce, the healthier our bodies are going to be, the quicker they're going to heal. So I stopped doing any herbs that purge or stimulate my body, and I just went to the nutritives. I like the ones like nettles, oats, draw, yarrow. So I also have incorporated herbs as well, but I'm feeling the results. So many of my clients are feeling the results, specifically clients who wake up in the middle and wake up in the middle of the night very thirsty, very hot, very dry, with a lot of anxiety, panic, adrenaline again. And I'm seeing they're sleeping better, they're feeling better through the day, they're feeling more solid, more grounded. It's really like the safety diet. I'm loving it.

So here's the review of what Karen shared with us today, just to put into perspective for everybody. Beans, which are the foundation of the diet of her diet and her healing work, and this is why. So all the toxins from our environments, the toxins from our foods, and our own metabolic wastes, those toxins will bind to fat. Okay? And they get stored in fat. It's like, think of a sponge. Fat just soaks them up. The liver is our detoxifier. It is the organ that keeps us alive by filtering out metabolic waste and filtering out any kind of nerve agents, any any environmental toxicity, pesticides, air pollution, chemical fragrances, you name it. The liver is filtering that out so we can have life. That's why it's called the liver. It keeps us alive. Now, that liver helps us digest fat, and it squirts bile into the gut, into the intestines, and it digests our fat. In that bile, because bile is fat as well, toxins get stored. These same toxins that we need to get rid of, rid of, gets stored in the bile. And our bodies recycle that bile. So 95% of our fat binding toxins get recycled back into our liver because 95% of those bile salts Karen was talking about get recycled back into the liver. They get reused. The only thing that removes bile salts, and you know, thereby they're in fat binding toxins, is soluble fiber. It's the only non-nutritive substance that can remove these, and it removes it through a bowel movement. So instead of it getting recycled back in from the colon, it goes right out into the toilet. And beans have the highest amount of soluble fiber, and we only need 15 grams a day. So what that looks like is a half of a cup of beans is 5 grams of soluble fiber. Half of a cup, three times a day. And if you get sick of beans or you have children that won't eat beans, she also said we can consume bean chips or bean pastas. All you have to do is look at the nutritional facts and the serving size and make sure you're getting five grams of fiber three times a day. Okay? So that's the bean part. Fats, stick with unsaturated fats. Simply put, the saturated fats exhaust our cells, which which creates free radicals, which creates cell damage and aging. Okay? It's also the precursors of many cancers and inflammatory diseases. Unsaturated fats don't take any energy from the cells, so the cells keep living happily, and then the fats can absorb and do all the beautiful things in the body like make hormones, healthy hormones, absorb nutrients, and slow down cellular aging. So any fat that's liquid or room temperature is an, is an unsaturated fat. Saturated fat would be butter, and sorry to say, coconut oil and palm oil. I was a coconut oil nut. That was the biggest thing for me to stop eating, and I definitely noticed the difference. She also says to add salt to your fats because salt gives the fat the energy to do what it does, but faster and more effectively. Permission to salt my fat. Thank you, Karen. Protein, Karen believes strongly in what she calls efficient proteins, meaning animal proteins. She says that you don't need to eat meat, but an animal byproduct, simply an egg, would do the trick. She says, get an unfertilized, local, free-range egg from a neighbor's yard. That's the most ethical animal protein she can imagine. She says this because prot, to you know, to have a complete protein, it has to have all the nine essential amino acids. Plant protein, we know, is incomplete. If you mix a grain with a bean, that has all nine essential amino acids. So if you're vegetarian, mix your beans with your grains, any grain. Now, I'm vegetarian. I'm vegan technically. I go by vegetarian because if I'm, you know, at a vintage store, I will buy used leather shoes because to me, it's more ecological than buying a vegan shoe that's plastic. So I don't have a full vegan lifestyle in terms of what I wear, but I do with terms of how I eat or how I treat animals. And so the, I didn't challenge her on this because I respect her work and I respect her wisdom. She's my elder, both as a human and a healer, and she has great results with the work she does. So I didn't find feel the need to push back. I really wanted to hear her experience. However, in my own practice, I use the, the plant kingdom, and I have great, great results. You know, people thriving on a vegan whole food diet. My daughter is a great example. She's five and a half, and she's the tallest child in her school, and her blood tests come back every year. Nutrition is perfect. Iron, protein intake, B12. She's pretty much the picture of health. That's what the doctors say. So that's really nice for me. It makes me realize, okay, some of us really can do this well. And I believe some of us can. Some people's bodies don't do well on a vegan diet. I have seen that too. So please know this is your path, and the information Karen's giving, and the information I'm giving, is information you want to take it in and sit with it and feel it and see where it goes. Most vegetarians or vegans I've worked with who don't do well, they're usually consuming high amounts of dairy and meat substitutes, which are all very high in processed soy, processed gluten, and saturated fat from coconut oil. And when I have clients get off of those processed foods and go to a whole food vegan diet, everything shifts. The high amounts of processed soy, gluten, and saturated fat are the main cause of imbalance in a plant-based diet. So again, if you're vegan or want to begin eating vegan, do so with a hundred percent whole foods to truly experience how your body feels. And make sure to have a lot of sauerkraut because that, that sauerkraut, that fermented bacteria you get from it actually helps your small intestines synthesize more B12 and more nutrients. Okay? That's usually a concern for a lot of vegans. They're not getting B12. I also don't believe a vegan can afford to drink caffeinated beverages or eat a lot of chocolate because we don't eat animal protein, which is so concentrated and highly grounding. Our bodies are much more sensitive toward being too expansive, too stimulated, not grounded enough. So that's my little input on the vegan lifestyle and how to do it the healthiest to see if it works enough for your body. I believe that Karen has had profound healing experiences with people who eat meat, as I have had. So that might be your body's path. I've also had profound healing experiences with people who don't. So try it. See which one feels right to you. Finally, fasting. My wife was asking about fasting. I think it's very important. Karen and I spoke about fasting after I stopped the recording, and she said fasting indeed cleanses the cells of these wastes and such and does have a lot of benefits. But the amount of adrenaline that's created when you're fasting can be really hard on the liver, and then all those toxins are going into the intestines with no fiber to pull them out because we're fasting. We're not taking in solids. So the waste can build up in the GI tract and, you guessed it, get recycled. So she said for anyone who likes to fast, use psyllium husk powder, which is the soluble fiber source she used to heal her daughter Ruth over 30 years ago. You have three servings a day while fasting. It's non-nutritive, so there are no calories or nutrients, so none of your internal organs need to work. No enzymes have to be created. You'll still have the benefits of a fasting body, and actually adding to those benefits by cleansing out the toxins that your body's excavating through the fast, the autophagy, as it's called. So that's the little piece on fasting. Please go to Karen's website, karenheard.com. That's Karen, K-A-R-E-N, H-U-R-D dot com. When you go there, you click on topics, you'll find a directory of nearly every health imbalance on the planet. You can click on one and pay for the class, which is a very affordable rate. I mean, I think it's like 200 or something, and they're yours forever. You can watch the videos over and over and over again, gain access to the specific dietary protocols for that imbalance, and even gain access to Ask Karen, which is an invaluable, generous forum for asking personal questions to Karen herself about your body, your protocol, any other questions or concerns you're having. So she's there for you through your health journey. The website again is karenheard.com. And not only did she share so much vital info with us today, but she's coming back. We just scheduled her next interview in October, and we're going to be talking about adrenaline and how it affects the body and how food and lifestyle play a huge role in that. This is going to be vital to my work since adrenaline is the foundational hormone of a traumatized body. Like I said, I discovered many years ago when I was only practicing nutrition, how food and how our food behaviors both impacted our stress and trauma responses and served as a diagnostic tool for the emotional causes that propelled the food cravings, behaviors, and disorders. So you definitely want to tune into that one. I'm beyond grateful to Karen as a mentor for me, and that I get to share her mentoring with all of you. In moments like this, I realize scarcity is truly a made-up concept that I'll never believe in, and I hope you don't either. So here's to learning more together. So as always, before you go, take a breath, feel your body, notice your emotions, and take that awareness into your life. I want to thank you for sharing this space with me. For more information on my work or any events that I might be hosting, please visit holisticlifenavigation.com, and you can find me on Instagram or Facebook at holistic life navigation.