[00:00:00] Hello, welcome back to the Accrescent Podcast. I'm your host, Leigh Ann Lindsey. Today we have a return guest on the show, Karen Hurd, who I love going to for so many different reasons. One, she is so unbelievably knowledgeable, but. Being the biochemist that she is, she is able to explain things on a cellular chemical level that I don't think you see very often.
And this is just the way my mind works. When I understand how something works in its most granular way, I'm able to understand it so much more, make decisions so much better. And so I was wanting to have a guest on to talk about detoxification. This is such a big term, used in holistic medicine, alternative medicine.
I think even in pop culture now, everyone is talking about detoxing. And there's a lot of gimmicks out there. There's a lot of things that are unnecessary. There are a lot of things that are counterproductive, [00:01:00] and I wanted to have a biochemist expert opinion on first just explaining what is detoxification on a cellular physiological level?
What's happening? What do we not need to be doing? What should we be doing? And she, on the one hand, explains it so in depth, but on the other hand, makes it so, so simple. So I think this is gonna be a fabulous episode to listen to, but a quick introduction to Karen. She has an incredible story that began in 1989 when her 18 month old daughter was poisoned by a household pesticide.
Given only a year to live, Karen refused to accept that prognosis and dove into intensive research on healing through nutrition and against all odds, and to the amazement of doctors, her daughter fully recovered and is living a healthy life in her thirties. That experience launched Karen into the world of nutritional biochemistry.
She earned her master's in biochemistry and spent decades helping people heal through nutrition [00:02:00] counseling, speaking engagements, and educational programs. She also served four years as an officer in the US Army in the Military Intelligence Corps, receiving the Army Commendation Medal for outstanding service.
One thing I wanted to mention before we dive into the episode is Karen has an amazing library of courses that she has created looking at different. Ailments, health concerns, diseases through this biochemist lens and what is so amazing. I was talking with her after this episode conversation saying, okay, so do you still work with people one-on-one?
What does it look like? And what she said is, although she doesn't work one-on-one with clients anymore, if you purchase any of her courses, you will get unlimited email access to her. Meaning you could purchase 10 courses or you could purchase one. It doesn't matter. You are gonna get unlimited email access to ask her as many questions as you want or need [00:03:00] to, and you can go back and forth as as much as you want for.
Forever, indefinitely, and I was so blown away because that is really such a generous, generous offer. So be sure to check, we'll make sure that we link that in the show notes below a link to her courses. Like I said, she is someone I honestly wish I could have her on monthly as just like. A core guest consultant to get her insight into so many different facets of health and healing.
So with that, please enjoy this conversation with Karen Hurd. I. Well, Karen, it's so lovely to have you back on. We just were talking off air that it's been five years since you were last on the show. I'm sure there's a million updates you have. But thank you so much for coming back on and welcome back.
You're welcome. I'm happy to be here. I. It's funny because I've had this podcast topic in my head for years now, and you were the one I specifically wanted [00:04:00] to talk to about detox because I remember in our, the two episodes we did back in 2020, I loved the depth of Understanding and chemistry and this, this cellular understanding of what's happening in the body.
And I really wanted to get that perspective on detox because I think it's something that we see this word thrown around all the time. You know, do a spring detox, do a summer detox, do a week detox. And I think we all need a better understanding of, in terms of the physiological body, what does detox actually mean?
What's happening inside the body? Detoxification is the process of filtering out things that are harmful to the human body and excreting them. That's all it is. And you know, when you, we talk about cellular detox that we're, we're starting to get into things that are, are really not necessary because cellular detox, that happens [00:05:00] all the time, but it's, it's.
It's something that the cell will might combine and do a biological chemical reaction with something that you've taken in. But even if it does, all of that is filtered out through the bloodstream. It's not, it's not changing that cell itself. And so we have made, we've made this into a big deal of nothing because we have three major detoxification systems in the body.
They work for it 24 7. If they stop, you die. It's that simple. And so, I mean, we, we, you know, you mentioned mm-hmm. Weekly or monthly or quarterly detoxes, that's not necessary. You will be detoxing every day. And if you're taking in things that you shouldn't be, we need to be eating a certain diet so that you can.
First of all, don't eat the things that are gonna create things. Create a substance for your liver to clear or your kidneys to clear. Or lymphatic system is separate 'cause it's just clearing disease like, [00:06:00] like a virus and, and bacteria. But the other two systems, the liver and the kidneys, they are working for you all the time.
For instance, if your kidneys fail to. To clear your bloodstream of all the garbage that's in the bloodstream, whether it's dumped there by a cell chemical reaction as a refuge product, which we do that all the time. Hmm. It's still the same system that cleans it out. It doesn't matter whether you ate the, the damaging.
Chemical well or substance. We'll use the word substance. Whether you ate the damaging substance, whether you breathed the damaging substance in whether it came through your skin, whether it was produced by your own metabolic processes. As cells go through cellular reactions, all of that is still cleared out in the same process either by your liver or your kidneys.
If your kidneys fail, you as powerful as they are, they just didn't filter your blood for all of this. Waste product, which we're [00:07:00] detoxifying from, you will die in two weeks. If your liver fails you and doesn't work at all, you will die in less than 24 hours. So these detoxification systems are working 24 7.
That's why we live as many years as we do. And so there's no need to say, oh, I have to detox my liver or detox my kidneys. Just quit eating garbage. That means that they have more to clear. And then eat the things that help them clear in the kidneys it's water. And with the liver it's soluble fiber, and that's, it's that basic and that simple.
Yes. I think that's a perfect place to start is that big picture summary and then we'll get into that. I think more specifically, because I think this is so important. We have made things really complicated, and maybe it's marketing, maybe it's sales that wants to sell us all of these detox products, but this is why I wanted to [00:08:00] have this conversation so that we all understand physiologically on a much, much deeper level what's going on.
But I do wanna take a second here to ask, because I know immediately the, the questions coming up in the audience's mind are. So what's all this talk then about toxic burden and toxic buildup and, um, you know, for example, I now I work with a lot of cancer patients on the emotional side, and they're coming in with heavy metal toxicity and mold toxicity and some of these things that it seems like they're really needing support in clearing.
And so I'd love your 2 cents on that, of these, these words that get thrown around of toxic buildup and what, what can be happening there. We have to understand that the body is conservative, so it's going to recycle anything useful that it can, and in that recycling process I. It could be recycling some toxins that you were exposed to yesterday, the day before.
Last week. Last year. 10 years ago. [00:09:00] 20 years ago. And that's part of the normal process. It's called the intero. Hepatic recirculation when it's referred to as the liver. And if you don't mind lean, I'll describe it. 'cause people have to understand it because that's where you get this toxic buildup. Idea and it's not happening at the cellular level.
People who tell you that it's happening at the cellular level, they're not biochemists. They do not understand. They're trying to market you a product and get you to spend money. But what happens is. Your liver is filled in your blood about a gallon a minute, and, and so in just a few minutes, all of your blood has gone through the liver.
The liver is a filter. It filters out anything that is not good for you. All the waste products that are fat soluble, the liver filters, by the way, all the waste products that are water soluble, the kidney is filtering. It's also filtering 24 7. So let's, we're gonna go back to the liver. So the liver clears all this trash out.
Well, where does it send it? It has to, [00:10:00] now we have to get it out of the human body. It's collected it, but now we need to throw it away. Well, the liver's exit for this trash is through a digestive fluid called bile bile. It's made in the liver. It is made out of fats because you have to put fat soluble toxins into a fat carrier.
You can't put fat soluble toxins into a water carrier, so the kidneys are not gonna be involved in this process with the fat soluble toxins. So the fat soluble toxins are deposited into that bile. They're molecules, and actually we give them a name. They're called mycells, but they're molecules, and then that travels down biliary ducts.
There's tubes, if you will, that lead one leads directly into the duodenum, which is the first part of your small intestine, and the other leads into the gallbladder. Where it's stored until you eat a meal, and depending on how much fat you had in that meal, you'll release a larger or a [00:11:00] smaller amount of bile.
Because bile not only is the trash truck for the liver, but it is also the digestive fluid that breaks the fats down into little pieces so they can cross the intestinal barrier and go into your bloodstream and be made into wonderful molecules that help us. All of this trash now is in the bile. It goes down, it all lands, whether it comes via the gallbladder or directly from the liver, that biliary duct, it all lands in your Dum, which is just underneath your sternum.
It's center of your body, first part of the small colon, and then that bile. Travels with all of the toxins that it's carrying because it's in the actual molecule. The molecule has captured it in a chemical bond and it travels through the odum and it's little zigzags back and forth. This is a small colon and 90 degree pen turns, and so the zigzags into the geo genum and it reaches the third, the geogen second part of the small colon, and it reaches the geogen, which is the second [00:12:00] part.
Then it goes into the ileum, which is the third part. And down is the lower right quadrant of your abdomen. That is where the terminal part of the ileum, the third part of the small colon is attached to the large colon, and it's actually divided there by a little valve called the ileocecal valve. It opens and closes and so it will be closed because they, we want to have this bile and all the foods that are being digested with a bile to be able to have a chance.
For the body to be conservative so that we can bring in any of those things that are in the bile that maybe be useful. Maybe we need some of those fats back into the bloodstream. And in that terminal part of the ileum, we will absorb 95% of our bile fluids. So the question then becomes if we absorb 95% of our bio fluids from the terminal, part of the ileum, because of the conservative nature of our bodies to recycle.
Does that [00:13:00] mean we're absorbing 95% of those toxins that are being carried in the bile? And the answer is a definitive yes. So 95% of the toxins that we were clearing dump back into the bloodstream, but as they cross into the bloodstream from the terminal part of the ileum, they're broken outside of the biomolecule.
The bio molecule is broken down into its little fatty particles. The toxin is released as it's. As it was put into the bile, it's released back into your bloodstream to cause more havoc. And then what will happen within four minutes, the liver will filter it out again with any new trash that it has a filter, put it in the bile and it goes to the gastrointestinal tract.
When these toxins are bound up in the bile, they're not in your bloodstream. They are not giving you a negative effect. They're bound, they're like in little prison. So the real goal. For us is to cause more of our bile to cross that ileocecal valve than the 5% that already [00:14:00] does. What if we could get 10%.
What if we could get 25%, what about 50%, 75%, or even approach a hundred percent clearing of the bile, then that means we're throwing away all that garbage. Wow. And so we have to find a substance. Mm-hmm. And it needs to be something that occurs in our normal diet. Because we were created to eat food, not take pills and do flushes and whatever.
This should be naturally happening, and it used to naturally happen all the time because we used to eat this food all the time, but we gave it up in the early 19 hundreds and we don't eat it very often. So we have to find a food that does two things. One, it has to be able to have the capacity to bind with the biomolecule and the biomolecules carrying this garbage.
It has to do that. And two, it can't be absorbed in the terminal part of the ileum. [00:15:00] And so what we have to do is there's only one food. One substance that can do both those things. And that is soluble fiber, not insoluble fiber. That's like the skin on, on, uh, a, a grape or it's a skin on, uh, a pee. It's the inside.
It's the. Soluble fiber that has the capacity, one to bind the bile, and two, it will actually never be absorbed because no fiber soluble or insoluble, but soluble fiber cannot cross the intestinal barrier. So when we eat soluble fiber, it will, and we eat it, we swallow it, it goes down into the duam, the bile is released into the duam.
Immediately there is a bond that is formed and cannot be broken. They get married and there is no such word as divorce, and they travel through the Duam Theum. They reach the terminal par of the ileum. [00:16:00] And the bile says, Hey, I'm gonna be going back into the bloodstream because this is where I recycle.
And the soluble fiber says, wait a minute, we got married back there in the duad one, and we're not ever gonna get divorced. So I can't cross the intestinal barrier. I'm going into large colon where I will be excreted in a bowel movement and you're coming with me. So that soluble fiber drags across the ileal sequel valve.
Once you're in a large hole and there is no absorption of anything that's happening except water, it will travel through the large colon and then in, in a certain number of a certain number of hours, you will have a bowel movement and you will put all of that garbage into. The toilet in the form of a bowel movement, and we have gotten rid of that.
And you shouldn't be afraid. Well, if we're not recycling bile, where will the liver get the ingredients to make new bile? Because it has to make new bile. Because if it doesn't make new bile, we die. Remember in 24 hours, that's if the liver's not functioning well, it makes it outta your bad cholesterol. It makes [00:17:00] that out.
Bad fats, you know, all that. LDL, cholesterol, low density, lipid proteins that are so bad for us it cause heart disease. Mm-hmm. Atherosclerosis. That's what bile is made out of, and it's made out of triglycerides. Triglycerides are actually a component that is that, that, that are fat cells and so it's a type of fat and so the liver will use what you have in your body and then what if you used of every bit of, of the raw ingredients?
Then your liver will just make the raw ingredient. It can make a triglyceride in the snap, so. So that's the way we, we have to get rid of this waste. So, so now the question becomes is where do we find soluble fiber? Because to do just a normal life not being sick, you don't have health problems, you don't have cancer, you don't have PMS, you don't have, um, arthritis, you don't have gastrointestinal dis difficulties.
For the healthy person, you need five grams of soluble fiber at breakfast, five grams of [00:18:00] soluble fiber at lunch, and five grams of soluble fiber at dinner. So let's look at our sources of food that have soluble fiber. The first thing we always think of is fruits and vegetables because they have fiber, but most of it is insoluble fiber, not soluble fiber.
An insoluble fiber will not work. It will not make this, this chemical bonding. It's actually a net that captures the myself. But what happens? Is that we then have to figure it out if we need 15 grams of soluble fiber a day, and one cup of fruits or vegetables had one half of one gram of soluble fiber.
So how many cups of, oh wow. Vegetables would we have to eat to get 15 grams if it's only a half a gram in a cup? 30 cups. Mm-hmm. Vegetables are not the source for us to help the liver get rid of all of this waste product. So let's look at what's the next most popular [00:19:00] when we think of soluble fiber and where do we find it in the grains and the grain that has the most soluble fiber is oats.
So if we had, and we don't eat oats generally, we don't as granola, you can eat oats raw, but generally we eat the oats cook. So if we ate one cup. Of cooked oatmeal. How many grams of soluble fiber are we going to get for one cup of cooked oatmeal? Two grams. Two grams? Hmm. Okay, let's do the math on, we need 15 a day.
We're getting two grams and a cup is of cooked oatmeal. So how many cups of cooked oatmeal would you have to have a day? Seven and a half. Hmm. Well, that's doable. A person probably could eat seven and a half cups of cooked oatmeal a day, but I think after a few days you'll be ready to vomit cooked oatmeal because you've had just too much of it.
Is there another source? The other source are beans. [00:20:00] Beans in one cup of cooked beans, have 10 grams of soluble fiber. Beans or pento beans, navy beans, garbanzo beans, lentils, black-eyed peas, chickpeas, which are the same as garbanzo beans. We have a variety. I mean, there's just dozens and dozens of types of legumes, beans that we have.
Those beans have 10 grams and one cup of cooked beans. So let's do the math on that. If we need 15 grams a day, five at breakfast, five at lunch, five at dinner at 10 grams and a cup, we only need a cup and a half. Well, that means just a half a cup at breakfast, a half a cup at lunch, and a half a cup at dinner.
Then you are doing all the detoxification of the fat soluble waste in your body that you need to do to remain healthy. But most people don't eat a half a cup of beans at breakfast [00:21:00] dinner. Wow. So what happens? They are not getting rid of as much garbage and it is recycling and it's always being cleared out.
If it stayed in the bloodstream, you would be dead in 24 hours. It's being cleared. But you're constantly recycling and the nest, it's recycling through the bloodstream. It causes problems. You have PMS, now you have cancer, now you have gastrointestinal Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, gallstones. I mean, the list goes on and on and on.
And so when we are already behind the power curve, because we haven't been eating beans three times a day for all of our lives. We might have to eat them six times a day. Six separate times a day. Eating a bigger serving is not going to help because you, there's this space of time because you were recycling.
Depends on the motility of the person, but we recycle our bile 21 to 72 times a day. So for my people that are really wow, having difficulties, [00:22:00] I'll say every 20 minutes. Eat a tablespoon or two of beans and then that will clear the things that we need to clear. And for people who are not so bad, it's like, well just, just eat them six times a day, breakfast, mid morning lunch, mid afternoon dinner before you go to bed, and then you will clear all of these, this waste product and the waste product.
We need to be clear on this. It's not just glyco phosphates from the, the. The, the chemicals that we're using on our crops, it is not just the, the, the, uh, forever chemicals and the microplastics and just name it. All those are being cleared by the liver easily, very easily. But it's also your own hormonal waste because you're making hormones to do all the chemical reactions that happen in your body every day.
And if you don't get rid of your own hormonal waste, then if you have too much estrogen, now you have PMS. Now you have too much progesterone. You have terrible menstrual cycles and [00:23:00] endometriosis. The the estrogen is causing cyral and the ovaries and fibroids to grow and fibrocystic breast disease and.
The list goes on and on. So we wanna get rid of our own normal metabolic waste besides the stuff that we may breathe, breathe in, or eat in. So, but there's nothing that we're really, nothing that is on the market that we are eating that we cannot get rid of out of our bodies if we just would be willing to eat, are soluble fiber three times a day and possibly more.
If you're in a wow situation that's bad. For any of you who follow me on Instagram, you'll probably have seen that a few weeks ago I did my first ProLon fast mimicking program and I was so blown away with how, how easy it was, how accessible it was. The unbelievable results that I experienced that I had to share it here on the podcast.
For those who aren't aware, ProLon is a five [00:24:00] day fast mimicking program. What blew me away was the impact because the magic of ProLon is that even though you're eating, it has been scientifically developed to put your body into a fasting state. And when we're in a fasting state, that is where so much magic happens in the cells.
We start purging dead cells, that autophagy happens. There's so much cleanup that happens when we're in a fasting state, and the only other way to get into the state is to do a five day water fast, which is super inaccessible and hard. That's not something that I don't think I would even ever do. But I also did the in-body scan at Ascent adaptation before doing the diet and after doing the diet, because I really wanted to measure results and I was blown away.
I lost six pounds just in that week. I lost 2% body fat. But the other markers that I was really excited to track were my inflammation went down significantly. [00:25:00] My phase angle went. Up significantly, which I'm gonna talk about a lot more because I decided I'm gonna record a short solo episode going super, super in depth into the ProLon fast mimicking program and more in depth into my results and what some of these measurements mean.
But if anyone is interested and wants to learn more, click the link in the show notes below, and that link will also give you 15% off your order. Once you click it, you'll scroll down and you'll see a little button that says Get 15% off. Their website is packed with so many research articles and studies and information for anyone who wants to learn more.
It's blowing my mind because it just gives such a more nuanced perspective, because I do think whether it's, you know, intentional or not direct or indirect, there's this, there's this idea even in holistic medicine that. The toxic burden is just too much. We, we need to get in there and filter your blood to get things out of your blood.
Your body's [00:26:00] not able to detox it. But what I'm hearing is actually our body is, to your point, we would die if it was not being filtered every day. But the real problem is that we're needing to give, we're needing to be able to excrete more of that bile. So that we can actually clear more of that out.
Otherwise, it is gonna keep filtering and getting cleared and filtering and getting back in and refiling, and that's gonna keep us alive, but might start to contribute to some different issues. So it's really not a filtering problem, it's an excretion problem. Well, summarized Leigh Ann, that's exactly what it is.
That's exactly what it is. And I, we have some very well-intentioned people in the holistic field. They're all well-intentioned. No one's trying. I mean, maybe there's a few charlatans out there are trying to rip you off and sell you products so they can make money. I mean, we always have some of those type of people running around.
But it's just a lack of understanding of how the biochemistry in the [00:27:00] body is working and it, our filtration system is working great. It's just we need to help it out a little bit and throw away what is filtering out, and that's for the fat soluble weight, which is the one that is the most dangerous and causes the most health problems.
We also have water soluble waste, but if you're drinking a half a gallon of water a day, because water is all we. All we need to do to flush it out, just drink water and we should be drinking pure water. Pure water is either reverse or distilled, not ionized water reverse is, or ionized water is alchemized water that actually changes the pH.
Don't change the pH of water. It is already a wonderful seven neutral. And so when you start to change the pH, you interfere with what chemical reaction can happen, and you actually create hyper chlorate. It's a, it's a bad situation. Just drink, just filtered water filter. There's two filter filtration processes that are excellent.
It's reverse osmosis and distillation. And then drink a half a gallon of water a day. If you're a bigger person, you can drink three quarters a [00:28:00] gallon, or you live in a, in a, in a, a climate that's really hot and you're sweating all the time, then you'll need a little bit more water. But everybody should be getting, if you're an adult, a half a gallon of water a day.
Oh my gosh. I just, I'm, I'm just smiling and laughing because it, it really goes back to that premise that our bodies are so intelligent. I think, I think what's worth noting is. Maybe the difference of where we're at today is, I think you said two really profound things earlier on. One is we used to eat legumes so much more than we do, so we were getting this soluble fiber on a daily basis so that things were getting, you know, more than, more than that 5% of the bile was getting excreted.
So we were excreting more of those toxins that are getting filtered all day long. I think now maybe we're in this place where it's, it's too. Two sides of the coin where we're getting exposed to a lot. There's, there's stuff in the air, there's stuff in [00:29:00] the water. There's stuff in our food if we're not being careful and we're also not eating enough of this soluble fiber.
So it's creating this, you know, this. The spiral where that 95% that's getting reabsorbed. There's a lot in there. And so it's even more important now that we're getting that soluble fiber. But I feel like if I could just condense this down to one thing, if someone listening is like, what can I do every day to support detoxification?
It's eat 15 grams of soluble fiber. Yes ma'am. That's it. Well summarized. I love that so much. So what I do wanna ask then is. You know, it's funny because you know the bean protocol that is, that is what you have spoken on so much. That is what you created years ago, and I wasn't even, it's funny I wasn't even coming into this conversation thinking we're gonna talk about the bean protocol, but now we're here 'cause it's the foundation of so much.
But what I do wanna ask is two parts. [00:30:00] One, for someone who really is in a. Deteriorated state of health, maybe a severe chronic illness. I'm, I'm thinking something like ms. Um, a LS or something like cancer. What, what does that shift? You said maybe I'll encourage more soluble fibers. So I wanna ask specifically about that.
And I also know we're gonna acknowledge everyone's different, everyone's bio individual, we can't just give blanket health statements. But what, what is that shift if they're in a DI deteriorated health state. Okay, and And in those two particular, or do you Two of them are alike. The A LS, that is Lou Gehrig's disease.
And then ms. Multiple Sclerosis, those are neurological disorders. On those disorders, the main, they just need to be eating their beans three times a day. They're 15 grams or half cup at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The focus on those two disorders is actually on the good fats and getting rid of the bad fats because myelin and [00:31:00] sheath that coats this in in an ms.
The myeline and sheath that is made out of fats. It's not made out of fibers. And if you don't have enough of the right fats and you're not gonna be able to repair any holes in the myeline and sheath, which is what causes ms, is that actually you put too much electricity or over. Over neuro fibers that are not geared for that type of electricity.
We're bio, we're biochemical beams, but we're bioelectrical beams too. We're sending electrical signals all the time. Mm-hmm. For fibers. And if you put too much voltage. You will. It's like putting, like if you plug your lamp into the wall and you plugged it into a two 20 instead of one 10 circuit, you're putting too much electricity through a wire that's not gauged to carry that amount of voltage and you'll actually burn a hole in the insulation of wire.
And that's what happens in the human body with MS, is that you had too much voltage. How did you get so much voltage? Well, part of it was because you weren't [00:32:00] clearing the hormones, epinephrine and norepinephrine, which are allowing all of this neuro transmission to happen, and you weren't clearing enough of that.
If you just ate your beans three times a day, that would be fine, but now we have to just. M mend the hole and to mend the hole. That takes a very specific fat, and those are the essential fatty acids that, that have a capacity to, to, to be made into that myelin and sheath. We can't use saturated fats like coconut oil or butter because those fats do not go through the molecular changes that we need them to go through to be able to create these molecules.
On the My lineage teeth now in Lou Gehrig's disease, we can slow the progression. Both of these diseases, slow them to where they stall. Especially I've seen that happen in ms, particularly in progressive ms. Um, but, or, but when you get to a LS this is a, a different function, but the emphasis is still gonna be on the good fats versus the soluble fiber.
Although we will wanna do the [00:33:00] soluble fiber to three times a day. When it comes to cancer, that was the other one that you brought up. Cancer is a nasty bugaboo because cancer is a mutation of your DNA. That's what cancer is, is a mutation of your DNA. Hmm. And when you mutate one part of your DNA, when that cell goes through a mitosis, a mitosis is where it goes through a lifespan.
It dies and it's replaced by a daughter self when that happens. Any. Damage that was done to that DNA, that mutation is passed on to the daughter cell. And so with one mutation, we call that an initiated cell that doesn't cause cancer. If you get a second mutation on the DNA, that's called a promoted cell, and you are at the cusp of cancer.
If you get a third mutation on that DNA. You could be in full-blown cancer. And when we get rid of our [00:34:00] stop coones, our DNA has certain they're, they're comprised of three nucleotides that make up what's called a a codone. And that codone, we have coones that tell the cell. Stop producing. Don't grow. Do not, do not go through a mitosis until it's time.
If we damage one of those stop coones, then that cell will just continue to reproduce and reproduce and reproduce with all that DNA damage, including the stop codone damage, and then that reproduction. It's not creating a poisonous substance, it's just creating a mass. Just a growth. And what kills people in cancer is not that this growth is emitting poisons into the bloodstream.
It's, it's interfering with the function of whatever, wherever it is. If it's in your lungs, it starts to take up space. Mm-hmm. So you don't, can't take in the air anymore 'cause you [00:35:00] got this big growth there and then you eventually suffocate because it. Used up all the space. If it's happening in the liver or the kidneys or wherever it is, it is actually just interfering with the normal function.
And so what causes a mutation? To, to occur on the gene are what we call nuclear receptors. There are certain things in our environment that cross through the plasma membrane. The plasma membrane is the cellular wall. Every cell has a a wall that protects the internal contents of the cell, and there's all kinds of, we call them organelles pieces inside your cell.
That have different functions, but deep in the cell, there's something called the nuclear envelope. It is the hidden most inner chamber of every cell except brain cells and red blood cells. They do not have nuclear [00:36:00] envelopes, and inside the nuclear envelope is a full copy of your entire DNA. Every cell in your body has a full copy of your entire DNA except your red blood cells and your, your, your brain cells.
And that DNA, if you damage it, if something gets through the plasma membrane, the cellular wall, and then travels through the cytoplasm, which is the internal fluids of the cell, and finds a nuclear envelope and crosses through the nuclear envelope, which is another barrier. Then it can attach to your DNA and it will start.
Mm-hmm. Swap out nucleotides and that's where mutation occurs. Only nuclear receptors can do this type of damage, so we avoid as many nuclear receptors as we can. What are some nuclear receptors, perfumes and fragrances. I. Hormones, all hormones, including vitamin, which is such a big craze [00:37:00] nowadays. Vitamin D is not a vitamin, it is a hormone.
When it was originally discovered way back, many, many, many decades ago, they said, oh, this is a vitamin like vitamin B or vitamin C. It's a catalyst that caused reactions to happen. No vitamin D is actually a hormone and hormones have the capacity to diffuse through the plasma membrane. Diffusion means it can just cross through the wall.
It can just walk through a wall. Any other substance, whether it's calcium or it's potassium, sodium, whatever it is, it has, there has to go through a doorway. You have to knock on the door and and be admitted. Mm-hmm. Inside of the cell. Not so with nuclear receptors, they just walk through the wall, they diffuse, that's the word we use in science.
They diffuse through the wall and when they get inside that cytoplasm, they will attach to a transcription factor. It's another little molecule. It just floats around the cyto cytoplasm of all our cells. And when it [00:38:00] attaches to that. Then they are drawn to the nuclear to get this, this, this now combined molecule of the nuclear receptor with a transcription factor, which were bound in a chemical bond.
They go to the nuclear envelope and they're still so tiny. These are tiny, tiny, tiny little molecules, and then they diffuse through the nuclear envelope because you can only go through a a channel to get into the nuclear envelope. You gotta have permission. They bypass that, they just walk through the wall and then they attach onto the DNA randomly.
It's not targeted. It's not targeted. It's random, and wherever it attaches, a lot of these things attach on a part of the DNA that will never cause you a problem in your entire lifetime. But if they randomly attach to an important part, P 52, gene P 52 gene is found in a large number of our cancers that it has been mutated.
That P 52 genes shuts down the production of that cell saying, no, there's something wrong with this cell. We're not going to, to continue to reproduce with this [00:39:00] mutation. And then you have six DNA repair systems that come in and you know, we can actually repair the DNA in our cells that get. Turned around by these nuclear uh receptors, we can go in and fix that and put the right to put it back in the right order the nuclearized and get all the coones all back to where they're supposed to be.
We have six different systems to do that, but we have to have our body have the time to do that. But sometimes when that P 52 gene has been mutated, it's blown, and then it's just growing and it's growing. It's growing, and so how do we prevent cancer? We eat our beans three times a day. If we already have cancers, you really only need to eat them.
We usually have people eat them six times a day because we're gonna try to get rid of some of this recycling waste that's coming through the liver. We get our water, but the, the biggest thing is quit exposing ourselves to these cancer causing. Substances. Don't wear perfume and fragrance. Don't use fragrance products in your home.
Don't, don't expose yourself to things that [00:40:00] increase your hormonal. Production because hormones are nuclear receptors too. Mm-hmm. That's why you hear of, you know, uh, hormonally, hor, hormonally receptive breast cancer. I'm receptive to estrogen, or I'm receptive, you know, and they'll name a hormone. It's that hormone that crossed that nuclear envelope and created the damage on the DNA.
Well, that's a naturally produced hormone. Well, why were you making so much of it? It's not that you were, you were making more of it. When you're per exposed to perfumes and fragrances, that immediately increases your estrogen production, but. When you are purposely not detoxing, we're using that word, you know, this is what your segment is about, we're not letting the filter work.
Then what occurs is that we don't get rid of the excess estrogen and then we have too much circulating bloodstream and access the nuclear receptor and goes in and mutates the DNA. Then cancer is nasty because then you can have mutations on [00:41:00] mutations. And so we might have a treatment that works for one cancer, but then it won't work after a while because then you have a mutation on the mutation.
And so they're very targeted. These, you know, the cancer therapies will chemotherapy and our immunotherapies for it, and they're very targeted. And so we're, we're missing the target because the target moved. When you have a moving target, it's sometimes hard to hit. Yeah. So the best thing to do in cancer is stop eating garbage.
And I mean, we can go through what garbage is. I mean, you know, all the things I've already mentioned, perfumes and fragrances as nuclear receptors, but we eat things that increase hormonal output. And then the, the hormonal output is the nuclear receptor. Yes, I would love to go more into the foods that contribute to that, the things to stop eating, but also, so just for clarity, 'cause I think I might've missed it for anyone in that place.
Is it, it's still 15 grams a day of soluble fiber, but we're eating it in smaller chunks more, in more, with more [00:42:00] repetition. Or does that, that number of grams a day also go up in your, you know, your 2 cents? It is, you need to have the repetition. So you could eat a quarter cup of beans, breakfast, quarter cup, midmorning, quarter cup lunch, quarter cup mid-afternoon, quarter cup dinner, quarter cup before you go to bed.
So it's, it's just, we're just trying to get you to have it more frequently. If you have cancer and you can have more, you can always have more because they're good food. Okay. I mean, if you're hungry, certainly you can have more, but it's the frequency that is most important. My relationship with coffee has changed so much over the years.
I went from waking up first thing in the morning, drinking multiple cups of coffee on an empty stomach, to now approaching it with so much more intentionality, especially when I started realizing just how much it was affecting my nervous system, which is why I'm. So careful and intentional about when, how, and what kind of coffee I consume.
Lately I've been [00:43:00] getting back into having a morning coffee, but after I first have my warm lemon tea, usually I'll even wait until after I've had breakfast to then have that first cup of coffee, and I've been loving putting raw honey, raw butter. And half and half in it. I know it sounds so decadent and it is absolutely amazing and something I look forward to every morning recently, but when I'm drinking coffee, I want to make sure that, first of all, it's free of molds because there was a study done that 90% of coffee has mold and mycotoxins, and this is why I love Four Sigmatic so much because they're third party tested for molds, mycotoxins, bacteria, heavy metals.
What I also love though, is they have a number of different coffees available that are either ground or whole bean. I'm a bit of a snob, so I love to buy the whole bean coffees, but it's so neat because they have. Their focus coffee blend that has extra [00:44:00] adaptogens to help support brain health. They have their gut health coffee blend that I'm really excited to start using because it has probiotics, prebiotics, Turkey tail, and chaga mushrooms that have been added to it.
They have their calm decaf coffee blend that has really calming adaptogens like Reishi and Chaga, and a number of other different blends. That can really support you in the best way possible. But these coffees are so intentionally created to provide clean, sustained energy without any crashes, without giving you the jitters, which is something I really started experiencing maybe a year or so ago, and which is why I've become so, so intentional about the kind of coffee I drink and when I drink it.
If you click the link in the show notes, you will automatically receive 20% off your first order. Yes. Let's get into some of the foods and the first thing that came up as you said that is I was thinking [00:45:00] soy is this big thing that's sort of now become like we're having too much soy, it's causing all this estrogen issues and am, am I right that soy is also a legume?
So maybe we can talk about that, but that's kind of an aside question. And then Yes, what should we be avoiding? Okay. Soy is classified technically as a legume, but it is not a legume that has soluble fiber. It has oil in it. Think about anything that we use that you can get oil out of. You cannot count that as a bean or as a legum.
So we use soy oil all the time. If you press a soybean, you'll get a lot of oil out that out of it. If you press a pinto bean, you'll get zero oil. There's no fat in beans in the legumes that we need with the soluble fiber. Soybeans do carry a little bit of soluble fiber, but not like a pinto bean, black bean or all these other beans.
So legume is a biological classification of plants. It's the way they grow on a vine, and so it's not [00:46:00] legume is. As a general term we use, and all of our beans grow basically the same way. They grow on a vine and they're in a pod and they have to dry, and then you have to strip 'em out of the pod. Same thing that happens with peanuts and with soy, but they are not legumes for our purposes.
So. That's the first thing on soy. The second thing on soy is it does come with a high amount of phytoestrogens. Phyto is spelled P-H-Y-T-O. It is the Latin for, um, plant. These are plant estrogens, and so for a long time, and there is still a, there is still a debate in the field. This debate is not finished yet.
It was thought that these plant estrogens would actually be protective because they would bind on the estrogen receptor sites and block the stronger estrogen from being able to bind on that same site because the site's already taken up. And then it would not stimulate the cell into mm-hmm. This excessive growth, [00:47:00] which causes all kinds of fibroids and cysts, not cancer.
Cancer is a mutation. The DNA, this is just increasing the growth of these cells that in the female tissue. I have done quite a bit of research on this, and I am not particularly in that camp that the phytoestrogens are protective. I'm concerned that they are. Acting as a stimulant to cause that cell to go through some type of growth.
And so my advice is to avoid soy. So the soy oils are okay, it's the soy proteins, it's, or the problems. So, and you, it's, so the oils don't have the phytoestrogens, it's what's carrying the phytoestrogens. So that is still a scientific debate right now in the field. So you'll have people on both, both sides of this issue.
For me, it's like, if it's a possibility, okay, why, why eat it? There's so many other things in life to eat, eat [00:48:00] something to else completely. A hundred percent. Thank you for that. So, so any, any other foods or food groups or food additives that can contribute to this? Yes, there are caffeine, sugars, and the sugars include.
Natural sugars, artificial sugars, artificial sweeteners, all of those can contrib contribute to an increased hormonal output. And when you increase your hormonal level, and we're not clearing them out fast enough, you will be. You're, you're dancing with DNA damage because all of them are teeny tiny little molecules and they diffuse through the plasma membrane, through the nuclear envelope, and they can attach to the DNA and cause a mutation.
And so when I say sugar, that's the obvious sweets. It's your cakes and pies and cookies and donuts and brownies and ice cream. All of the [00:49:00] sweetss. It also includes, and this is where people get all tripped up. It includes your fruits because fruits, bananas, pineapples, apples, they're very sweet. And anytime we get more than five grams per serving, we're too sweet and we have excess glucose, which will stimulate a production of hormones.
And so we wanna avoid those things. And then people get into, well, what about if we do all these natural sweeteners like. Stevia or Truvia or we do, um, you know, maltose or gala lactose or, you know, they name all kinds of different sweeteners, you know, monks, fruit. But the problem is all of those are direct stimulant to produce a hormone, and we're trying to avoid that.
So for people who wanna be healthy. Don't eat anything that tastes sweeter than a carrot. You can have carrots and to after you don't eat sweets anymore, carrots are gonna taste very sweet to you. Or like winter squash like a, like a. [00:50:00] If most people, they have to put brown sugar or marshmallows on top of it, but when you don't eat sugar anymore, that winter squash will taste so sweet to you and it's not sweet.
But I mean, that's not going to create the hormonal rush as if you had the brown sugar on it or you had a candy bar, you had, you know, a pastry. What is the max amount of sugar? Grams of sugar? We wanna, we wanna have in the back of our mind, I think it's so clear that the FDA recommendations here are just so we need to disregard those completely.
Yes. I, I, I have not been a advocate of the food pyramid in all of those advice ever since I've been a biochemist. It just doesn't fit. So it's. It's five grams of sugar or less per serving. And a serving is generally a half a cup is, you know, it depends on where you live because then we can get into grams, but it's generally a half a cup.
So potatoes, you'll notice potatoes don't have sugar. They have carbohydrate. I'm not talking [00:51:00] about carbohydrate, I'm talking about sugar. There's a separate listing on a nutrition facts label for sugar versus carbohydrate. Sugars are a subset of a carbohydrate. You wanna have five grams or less per serving.
How do you know what a serving size is that's set the serving size? I have no problems with the FDA setting, the serving sizes, but you look on the label, it will say a serving size is. They tell you how many crackers or how many, you know, pieces or how, how big of a serving a half a cup or a three quarters of a cup, they will tell you what the serving size is.
You want five grams or less, then you're good. And you'll notice that five grams or less things don't really taste sweet. And that's okay because when you don't eat sweet, they will start to taste sweet to you. Mm-hmm. Because you're not, you haven't raised a threshold mm-hmm. Of years. Sweet take. Okay. Is there a max grams per day that you're like, you know, five grams per serving basically at any time, but within a day, don't [00:52:00] have more than this, or It really is more about the dosage each time you're having sugar.
It is about the dosage. Each time you're having something that has sugar in it, you can have as much of that as you want. There's not a. Top number. Now, if you're trying to lose weight, you shouldn't just stuff yourself silly, you know? But no, there is no, there's no maximum. And actually we do stop eating after a time because we're full.
Okay? And we can't eat anymore. Yes. Okay. So what I'm hearing is it's more like, you know, in the morning for example, I put, I put honey in my coffee and I wanna ask you about the caffeine too. 'cause that's gonna be a big one. But I put a little honey in my coffee. That's a serving, so maybe I have my five grams of sugar in my honey.
So then it's okay. I, that's enough sugar for this sitting. Maybe later this afternoon I'll have some tea with some more honey in it. That's another five grams. Because the, what I'm, I feel like what I'm hearing is there's something that happens when we have more than five grams of sugar in one sitting.
That's where this [00:53:00] hormonal process gets started. More than five grams of sugar per serving, not per sitting, because you could have several products in one meal, okay. That have five grams or less of sugar per serving. It is a density issue. How? How much, how intense is the sweet and that particular food.
That's the issue. And you know you're using, I see. Okay. Honey, honey is an example. You need to know honey is more than five grams of sugar per serving. Honey is not, is is a sweet, it's intensely sweet. So sorry to to break that news. Yeah, it is very sweet. I will give you that. Yes. What, what, is there anything, I'm trying to think.
Maybe like coconut sugar, palm sugar. Um, Nope. Or we just don't sweeten our drinks, which I think is the ideal. That's the ideal. You don't sweeten it. Your palm sugars are too sweet. Your coconut sugars are too sweet. They're all intensely sweet. And so you're we're, [00:54:00] that, that's not it. And so we just, the, the easiest rule to remember, if something tastes sweeter to you than a carrot, it's too sweet.
So your honey and your tea or your coffee, it's sweeter than a carrot. And you know that. And so, you know, it's too sweet. So you just say, I'll just, I'll learn not to do that. Yeah. But what happens if you do more than that? You are going to create a hormonal response. You are going to create more hormones than you should create, and your liver has to clear those out and get rid of them.
And if you get too much of them circulating in the bloodstream, you're gonna have a large crossing into the nuclear envelope. You will have DNA damage. And at some point down the line, you're looking at cancer. It's just like, why are we even playing with this? Why do we just, I hope that I won't get it.
Well, maybe you won't. Maybe all your DNA damage happens on inconsequential parts of that chromosome, but you don't know that. That's random. Oh, that's so pro profound. That's so [00:55:00] powerful. Okay, can I really quickly ask about the caffeine and how this connects to hormones? And then again, a little bit of your recommendations on caffeine and take it a day and then I promise I'll land this plane and let you go.
Okay, sounds good. Leigh Ann. Caffeine is a direct stimulant to the adrenal glands. It whips the adrenal glands. It's like taking a a bull whip to the glands and saying, give me adrenaline and give me adrenaline. Now, a bunch of it. That's why people do caffeine because they gotta get going in the morning 'cause they're tired or they have to think more clearly.
When you produce more adrenaline, understand it's a neurotransmitter, it's gonna make you think faster and quicker, and people love that feeling. It makes you feel stronger, more energetic. You can go do more exercise or do whatever you wanna do. You have energy. That is all adrenaline working for you, but you're gonna pay for forcing that gland to continually give you and give you, and give you, and give you more and more and more.
You wanna take care of that gland, and it will always give you enough energy and enough brain power to [00:56:00] produce what you need without overproducing. So caffeine is always a direct stimulant to a gland, and you wear it out over time, and then you'll find out you need more than one cup of coffee. You need two now.
You need a whole pot. Now. The whole pot doesn't work for you anymore. Yes, caffeine is a drug. It is technically a drug, and so you become addicted to it, so you need more and more of it to get the same response that you used to have. In the meantime, you are just. De demolishing your adrenal glands until they will not work.
And then there's a day. Doesn't matter how much caffeine you do, you're always depressed. You're always tired. You just feel like the world's not worth living anymore. Why do I even get up in the morning? I. And it doesn't matter how much caffeine you do. Well that's because you have completely exhausted the gland by continuing to whip it and saying, work harder, work harder, work harder, work harder.
No, just take care of it. So your second question was, how much caffeine is allowed in a day? Are you ready here? I'm glad you're sitting down, Leigh Ann. Zero. [00:57:00] Zero. I hear everyone crying in their cars as they listen to this. Well, and then how does that relate back to these? I, I'm probably messing up the terms, but the nucleotides, the hormones that kick off in the nuclear envelope and kind of can attach to the DNA, which then can ultimately cause the damage and then contribute to cancer.
It is absolutely related. I. Because you increase the hormone. I just spoke to you about adrenaline, but what you don't understand is also increased your estrogen. It also increased your thyroxine. It increases every hormone because we don't make hormone in little, in in silos when we increase the endocrine production.
Mm-hmm. Or the adrenaline production, we increase the entire endocrine production. Endocrine system is the system that makes hormones for you. You increased all your hormones, uhhuh, and so you're just flooding your nuclear. You're just, you're just barraging your DNA. And so hopefully it won't be any damage on a, [00:58:00] on a, a codone.
That's important. That's random. And so cancer is the, yeah. The killer in our country today, heart disease, that's the number one. And number two is cancer. And it's like we are playing with fire. Stop it. Yeah. And so you're just playing Russian roulette. Exactly. Russian. Let Exactly. Oh my gosh, Karen, this was unbelievable.
You are amazing. I such a wealth of knowledge and passion. I could talk to you for hours and hours and hours. I'm so grateful for your time. Thank you. You are most welcome.