E041: You’re The One Living In Your Body!

Imagine getting up every day full of energy is if you were in your 20s. Again, what would that be like? What would that be worth to you? What is your health worth to you? Think about it. Your health isn't everything. But without it, everything else is nothing. And yet too many of us are taking it for granted until something goes wrong. No one wakes up hoping to be diagnosed with a disease or chronic illness. And yet, we've never been taught how to be proactive in our health through our school system, or public health. As a registered health coach and integrative health practitioner, I believe it is time this information is made available to everyone. Combining new knowledge around your health and the ability to do my functional medicine lab tests in the comfort of your own home will allow you to optimize your health for today and all your tomorrow's don't wait for your wake up call. Welcome back to the don't wait for your wake up call Podcast. I'm excited today to bring you another amazing guest. Her name is Cheryl Prince. Welcome Cheryl.

Thank you.

So excited to have you here. Cheryl is passionate about wellness. She retired from nursing in 2013 and has pursued a career in prevention as a Reiki practitioner, holistic nutritionist, Farmer and past educator at the Canadian School of Natural nutrition. She recognizes that wellness is not just being without disease, and offers a unique individualized approach in assisting her clientele with reaching their own optimal wellness. So I absolutely love this Cheryl and I agree with you 100% That wellness is just is not just being without disease, there's so much more to wellness. And as we dive into this conversation today, I would love you to share your story, your story that you know, took you into a career in nursing and then has had you retire from nursing and move into what you're doing now.

Thank you, Melissa. Um, yeah, you know, first of all I want to say I really appreciate coming out here and talking and speaking our messages because this is a really important time. The transition right now is polarized between Elio Pathak and and alternative medicine. And we need to be able to marry up together and work it compassionately. together so that we can get the best help we possibly can. So my story did begin a long time ago when I was I like to say, forced in to nursing by by the Lord or by God, I was outside working in my yard and my son has mental health issues. And it was quite troubling. And then I had this voice or some people like to call them downloads that said to me, Hey, you need to be a nurse, you can help a lot of people through nursing. So the problems that my son had turned out to be hypoglycemia, and not the diagnosis of bipolar schizoaffective disorder, which is a pretty scary diagnosis with anybody who has teenagers who are unaware of what's going on in their teenagers brains. When they're healthy. You had a low blood sugar disorder, which turned out to be my son's problem.

Exactly. And, and first having to process that initial diagnosis. But then realizing that that wasn't actually what the problem was. And there was something else going on. So going, yeah,

so you know, it actually being a trained nurse. It was actually very difficult for me to get my doctor to do a glycaemic test on my 15 year old son. And they he said to me, actually, one days, you know, he didn't show up diabetic. I don't know why you want to continue this. He has bipolar schizoaffective disorder, and he needs to be on these medications for life. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, I want the test done. Fortunately, I am an advocator. For people that's what a nurse is is an advocator for the patient, not driven by medical system. Right. Always advocating for my patients, the right wellness for them, whether it meant staying at home, whether you know with their spouses to die. It meant coming in and having a quick procedure, you know, that could then enhance their health. Right. quick procedure could also detriment their health depending on their age. I'd like the alternatives that we could go in and make decisions that were best for them. So that's what we did with my son. And we found out that in the first paragraph, it said that he did not have diabetes. But the second paragraph said that within an hour and a half of him eating his blood sugar's dropped to a dangerous zone of being audio and visual hallucinations. So audio and visual hallucinations, as we know, are signs of schizophrenia. But what I was unaware of at the beginning of all of this was that my son was taking his nice packed lunch that we always ate a wholesome food, dropping it in the garbage and going to 711. And eating junk food was very, very troublesome because I didn't know it. Right? Once we found out what was wrong with him, truly wrong with him, it was a matter of eating protein in the morning, changing our diet up making sure we were balanced, to keep our blood sugar's at a regular level throughout the day. And that was kind of got me started thinking along the way, with just about every patient I had in the hospital.

And just before you go there, I just want to just highlight the fact that so often, we don't connect food to impacting how we're feeling or behaviors, how we're functioning, our cognitive function, right? And we're also not necessarily educated enough to understand, you know, how to be balancing our blood sugar levels, right? And what that looks like, or that you know, as a child, dumping your good homemade lunch in the bin and doing what all the other kids are doing, it's not impacting them, why should it impact me, and not realizing that the food that we eat, because our body is unique does impact us differently to the next person? So I can totally see how you know, this all happened, right? And as you're telling this story, I'm thinking how many other parents out there are relating to this right now? Or are thinking back going? Wow, you know, what, if that was me, but I've been on this drug for all of this time, because I've been told I have schizophrenia? Maybe it's not that.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and this is where we have to really know who we are. Oh, I think we're in a society that we want a quick fix today. And I actually talked to a medical doctor about this one time. So you know, I said to him, hey, doctors, and I'll eliminate his name, because I want him under the bus. But I said to him, why do we not discuss food and exercise and vitamin D and getting out in the sunlight and turning off the media and doing all this stuff when we're talking brain health? And I call it brain health? Because you know, it is not a mental illness? It is it? What I like to say it's the biochemical reactions that are not happening due to certain reasons. And I love to be the investigator as to why the reason for it. So I said to him, Hey, doctor, how come you don't suggest to somebody to go out there and do this treatment, because he, you know, it works. And he says, it absolutely works. But unfortunately, my license is at risk. Because if you I come in, you come in and you're diagnosed with severe crippling depression, and you go home and kill yourself that day, I haven't done my job, which is send you off with prescription drugs that could then turn around that diagnosis within 24 hours, or 48 hours or 72 hours. It's a quicker, more preventative method for ensuring that we are not sued for malpractice. And I was like, Oh, that's so backwards. But

luckily, though, the laws around that and the insurance companies around that have it backwards, as you say, right, because they could set up a protocol that says, you know, first we're going to address these factors, right. But part of the problem, I think, too, is is that you ask people to go and address their exercise and address their food and all of that. But doctors don't have time to spend explaining how to do that. So they don't know they're just given a piece of paper and say, go do this, right. And then it doesn't get done, but the pill will get taken. And that's part of why I offer the work that I do here. And what you're doing in your work now is coaching people through this holding their hand guiding them letting them know they can do it even when it feels hard, because it will feel hard. It's different. But then very soon after the body starts to heal, and then it feels amazing. So I can see that poor doctor. Yeah, you know, he might have even tried Right, maybe not, but I could see him wanting to do that. But then, you know, what is the success rate, if all he can do is say, Here's a piece of paper, follow these steps, but then it doesn't get done. And that's a problem too. So we, as a human race, we want that quick fix. But we're also not yet in a place. And this is where I know you and I are wanting to affect change, is we're not in a place of actually taking responsibility for our own health.

Absolutely, you know, we, we outsource responsibility on everything, we're not responsible, don't take a blame, you know, but I am responsible for everything that goes in my mouth, I'm responsible for everything that I said spend my energy with. And so when we talk nutrition, and, you know, I want people to understand is it's just not about food, it's every part of our life is nutritionally, you know, so I taught optimal nutrition for the brain for 10 years at the Canadian school natural nutrition. And that gave me a lot of perspective, because even though, we get a blanket diagnosis of anxiety, your anxiety could be different than my neighbors anxiety could be different than my anxiety could be different than my child, it could be different than the people living in my own home. 100% You know, whether I'm able to, uh, you'd have the enzymes to be able to digest or be able to mentalize the right, nutrients might sound like really big waves, but it's, I mean, it's, again, the biochemical reaction of eating the food to make sure we get the nutrients out of it. Is our digestive system working? Right is, you know, it's a stress level? Yes, you might. And that's where we really get into it, because I am all about stress management being a nurse. You know, it's like, oh, my gosh, is there a nurse out there that does not have some form of PTSD of some kind of being in fight and flight, the entire shift that she's on. And most of the nurses I worked with, we did not like to go out and socialize after hours,

right? Because you needed to process and like, go everything that you'd been dealing with for that 810 1214 16 hour shift? Yeah, I totally get that. And, you know,

there was a lot of 16 hour shifts for myself. This was I quit nurse, I quit being a floor nurse, 10 years ago, now, I will never leave. Being a nurse, I was told it's in my blood, I am a caregiver, I just moved it around a little bit differently. So now, I get to work with you, before you get sick, I get to work with you, when you recognize that maybe there's a problem with something. And currently, I do a lot of alcohol removal. Because, you know, alcohol is one of the worst things we can put into our brain. I mean, it can seem like fun, while we're having it read, it actually is a very difficult substance to detox out of our fat cells, which is our brain, you know, so I do a lot of work with that. And I enjoy the fact when people come to me and say, you know, I think I want to go off of this, I don't have a problem. But I just don't want to fit into the normal. Let's go out Friday night and drink, I want to have a life. And so I like to help people become the inner child again, right? And then bring enjoyment in life in love back into their own bodies, and then be able to capsule, what the real, you know, purpose here is on earth, not to be drunk every weekend, right? And

recognizing that you can still socialize, but alcohol doesn't have to be a part of it. Right?

Absolutely. You know, like, there are so many alternative things that we can do. But one of the things that I like to reassure, it's not a shameful thing. If if you are saying oh, I can't get off of the alcohol, or I need my beer on Friday, this should be no shame in that you have to I like to go is these are the microbes in your guts that are dying off in seven days that are saying feed me this particular type of sugar. And I'll feel good again. And so that's actually what I feel is going on. And then we have to retrain the brain to get joy out of life again. So to help them develop that dopamine reward system. We're enjoying life,

right? And the serotonin and of course, that's 95% of that is made in the gut. So when we rebalance the gut, the body can start making it again. So we're all interconnected. And back to your point about when we talk about nutrition, it's not just the food we put in our mouth, it is how that food is impacting every part of us. Right? And I love to say we're not is what we eat. We're actually what we absorbed. So our digestion, our digestive system has to be functioning optimally for us to be able to truly absorb everything that we're putting into our mouth. And you and I both know that we're in it when we're in that chronic stress state. Digestion isn't even turned on.

Yeah. But I don't think many people understand that. But they don't have like, they'll think, Oh, I'm eating in front of the TV, and I'm watching the news. And I'll be like, Yeah, well, you're sitting there and you're, you're absorbing all that negative while you're eating and in fight and flight. And I did do a lot of work with I have a good a great practice with first responders, which are RCMP, ambulance drivers, nurses, right. Because I riders, yeah, firefighters, those people are always on fight and flight mode. And therefore I like to be able to help sort out what is going on? And there's a gentleman so they come to me. Typically, with type two diabetes, right in and say, I don't know why I would have type two diabetes. And I like, Okay, this is why you maybe then that you're inviting sipes, foods you're eating are going into sugars into your body, and then you're fighting? All the things that go along all the hormones like the insulin that are coming in, then are you insulin resistant? For how long? What, what does this all look like? You know, so a lot of people aren't aware that, even if I am then I can carry type two diabetes, primarily due to fight and flight, right? So making that connection, then can how do I plan my day? How do I plan my meals? Where am I eating? You know,

slow down, right? While I'm eating, but in my day, and as you said, How do I implement self care in order to counter that stress? Some of the stress we can learn to mitigate entirely, but not all stresses are going to go away. There's always going to be stress, but it's how we manage them. Right? So it's balancing it if the stress is coming in, and we're in a really, you know, high stress week, maybe there's a lot on at work and projects do or whatever, well, then we need to actually be doing more to counter that stress. I rather than just pushing through.

Yeah, I don't know, I think I read somewhere for every 20 minutes of stress, you need seven hours restorative sleep. Interesting. And I don't know is the nursery 16 hours of stress? Could I eat? Nope. Did I even get my cup of tea? No, it you know, patients are kind of rude, that they don't have their their crisis. At that time. When you first are fresh on the ship, they have it at lunchtime, they have it at dinnertime, they have it in your coffee break, right have to go pee, you know, like, you don't get the option of finding out when your patient is going sour or what you know, we call writing crisis. Right? You know, a lot of nurses just work their way through that, or a lot of medical professionals work their way through that, even though they know what they're doing to their body. They it's inbuilt in us, you know. So I think when I left nursing, it was because of misinformation given to one of my patients, by a medical surgeon, and the patient came in two days later with an obstructed bile duct, which then sent her into ICU. Now, if she would have gone home from a simple procedure, which is again, it's not nothing is simple when you remove an organ, right body, and so she had her gallbladder removed, which she you know, the doctors all say, Oh, it's a simple procedure. But it's not because that's connected to our digestive system in a certain way, then emulsify the fat and if you've already having problems emulsifying fat and getting the pain at the gallbladder issue, then you have to kind of decrease the amount of fat you're taking in like your body going to a balancing, you know, working homeostasis wise balance itself out so that it can then start working great. Get rid of those little stones

and get used to not having a gallbladder anymore, which takes time to write.

Absolutely. You know you can have a gallbladder and you have it not working because I had the same thing. One time oh my gosh, they were amazingly great. gave me my first gallbladder attack at 25 and which is young, but I also worked at the Dairy Queen when I was younger. So I got into the habit at eating, you know deep fried food or fats. Yeah, perhaps poor fats. Yeah, you know, and I was eating that. I had an attack, I chose to do the long route. I'm not having it eliminated. Now if I choose to eat something I can write, my gallbladder is relaxed. But this woman ended up in ICU because she went home and had the hotdog and the pizza that she was told, yeah, go ahead and eat that kind of stuff. Two days after postnup, you should never have that. That was probably my final. My shift. Yeah, I couldn't take it because I was like, what's going on? Why don't you know about nutrition? Why don't you know about this. And in all fairness, they're trained in their specialty, right. And their specialty is different than my specialty. and my specialty is on food. So therefore, I can explain how the food where it's a little bit more comprehensive than, than the doctor who can explain the procedure a lot better than I could ever.

Absolutely, yes. Yes. But it's unfortunate. When the not we when we rather than saying I don't know, or let me have my nurse talk to you. We give an answer that isn't the right answer.

Absolutely, you know, and then we have been as a gender multi generational giving our physician control of our bodies. And that is something we need to take back. So you need to recognize that something is going on. For instance, I had pumpkin pie the other day, I woke up with severe gastrointestinal distress yesterday, and I'm like, What did I eat yesterday that is causing me a problem today? Right. And I, my son said to me, Oh, I put whipped cream in the in the pumpkin pie. And I'm like, Well, I don't eat dairy. That's it. Right, investigated what was going on? I could have gone to the doctor, because that's pretty sick. Right? I chose to investigate what I did 24 hours before, which is what you and I do we invest? What's going what you've been doing to get you to that point of distress, right? Yeah.

And I love that. And you know, when you get in tune with your body, and you have that awareness around how your body responds to things, and the fact that it is talking to you, right, that waking up with that gastrointestinal pain was your body trying to ask you to do something different and saying, Hey, hello, I didn't like what you did yesterday. Can you figure out what it is? And please don't do it again. Right. But I mean, in you, you said you were pretty sick. So you know, you may not have got up and go on about your day. But sometimes the body doesn't speak quite that intensely. And we just push through, right? Because we have that go, go go doo doo doo personality and hear all these sayings. You know, suck it up and just push through, you've got all these other things to do. And we're not listening to our body asking us to do something different. So we missed the early warning signs.

Yes. You know, it's funny is I did I had a really severe reaction. Now I eat 98% clean. That means I have I grow my own food. I source all of my own food. And occasionally I'll have something that somebody else does for a while I don't, you know, and that's what happened. Somebody made me pie it, I ate it. You know, but my body wasn't used to it. And I recognize that. And I think that's the most important thing for us to do is to recognize what's going on with our body, you know, and to recognize that it can take 24 to 72 hours, that type of immune system response to happen. Yes. And in tune to your body really?

Yeah. And sometimes it's hard being I mean, you because you know, you're 98% clean, and you're growing it all making it all. And then you have that one thing that was outside, it was pretty clear to you what the culprit was. But for other people that might not be right. And when it's 72 hours later, it's also I don't even know what I ate three days ago, because I've just been going about my life eating on the run, grabbing things and what day was three days ago, right? It's really hard for people. But that's actually where the power of functional medicine labs can come in. And we can actually test this for people and test that immune response for food. So if people are interested in knowing that's something that I offer, I don't know if it's something you offer as well, but that's so helpful for people because then they know, right, and it's not about removing the foods forever. It's not an allergic reaction or anaphylactic. It is a reaction. But when we remove the foods for six weeks or 12 weeks or six months depending on the degree Have immune response and sensitivity, we can allow our whole digestive system to calm or lowering the inflammation on the body because we're not eating it for a while we're letting the body heal. And then we can reintroduce one by one, because now we know the culprits to test and we're not guessing anymore. And then we can be aware of any response we have inside the 72 hours. And then we know and then after that, it becomes a choice, right? And you I teach the 8020 rule, you know, feed your body in a nutrient dense, clean way, 80% of the time. And when you do that, the body can handle the 20% of the time where you might make choices, to eat what everybody else is eating that, you know, may not be the best for you. But you have the power of making that choice. Because you know, it will if I eat this pizza, now this is going to how it's going to make me feel in two days or three days. How do I want to feel then do I have a big presentation? And do I want brain fog? No. Okay, so I'm not going to choose the pizza on the menu, I'm going to have something else. Or I can roll around on the couch on Sunday, and I don't care. So I'm going to eat the pizza and enjoy it, and then go for it, right. But it becomes a choice. And when you you have taken back the power, because you know how your body's gonna respond. And you're making the choices about how you want to feel, as opposed to unknowingly eating foods that are impacting you, and you have no idea which foods they are and how to get Take back your power.

You know, I love that it is I like to do the 8022. So I don't I'm not a functional medicine. So I do not run the tests. But what I do do is get people to keep a 30 day diary, right? And they're like 30 days, that's a lot. But I call it a food mood diary. Never know how far back you have to and how they eliminated everything out of my diet. Now I go, Hey, I want some ice cream. Now that's a cold food, it's dairy than you already heard I'm lactose intolerant don't have the enzymes to be able to break down the lactose that I go. Now I know if I eat ice cream. I'm on a five day mission of five day mission of being depressed afterwards. So I go, do I have the time to spend five days depressed? No. So eliminate that, you know, who am I going to be around? Are they going to trigger me to be a little bit more irritable? Right? You know, like, these are all things I have to look out when I make a decision for what I am ingesting, you know, and it's kind of funny, but it is a good way to live. Because then I get to decide how my body feels. I am the one who has the power over what's going on. And I get to feel crappy, if I choose to eat something that doesn't fit. That's my responsibility. And it's always our responsibility on our bodies. Because you know, it's something a physician told me a long time ago. Nobody knows your body like you do. I don't live there. You live there. And even though I know all my medical background, you're the one who knows how you feel 24/7. And I love that.

And I agree as well. And I will often tell my clients that you are your own best doctor. Because you have lived in your body your whole life, right. And I so is totally in alignment with what that doctor said. And I say that to my clients, when they've gone to the doctor. They are trying to listen to their body, they have symptoms, they don't feel good. And they're trying to understand why. And they're getting told, Well, we've done all the labs and there's nothing wrong with you, or we don't know what's wrong with you, right? And then, or it's all in your head, they get told that sometimes too. And when they find me I'm trying to undo a little bit of that and saying is not in your head, your symptoms are real. And you do need to listen to your body because you are your own best doctor. And so, you know, second opinions. Third, opinions are important. And when your body's talking to you, you need to keep looking for the person that can help you when you're being told there's nothing wrong with you.

You know, that's absolutely right. I personally feel we can keep it as simple as simple can be. And that's going back into the elimination diets, right. But, you know, we can become invested in being sick. We can and we can own that illness quite well. And you know, I listened to my mum who sorry mom to throw you under the bus right now. But I listened to her talk about her, her owning her cancer. She had a diagnosis of cancer. Stage four colon cancer 10 years ago, we eliminated everything out of her diet that was going to impede her healing. Right. And my mom didn't realize she was celiac. Although she had all the symptoms of being celiac, it had never shown up on a test. Right? Right. Yep. But she always had problems, right. So that's what I contribute to her stage four colon cancer, work on a bowel floor. A lot of people with colon cancer were celiac, and no one. Right? Or they ate a lot of sugar. Right? Yeah, part of my job was to investigate what people were doing in their diets on the floor, so that we could help them make the best choices going forward as a nurse that was before I became a nutritionist, right? I see now it's like, Okay, we got the best of both worlds going on. And I will never not go to my family doctor. So I want to make that very, very clear. We work with them. Yes. There's a difference with working with them, and then telling us what to do. Yes. And sometimes, when you get five minutes in a doctor's office at the end of the day, and they've already seen 75 people, they may not actually be there with you. And this happened to me, I ended up going to a specialist because I had heart problems. And I actually ended up having a blockage in my heart two years ago, yes, caused by stress. Um, something I investigated in a 40 day challenge for myself, was I had uncontrolled hypertension. Regardless of what I was on, it didn't make any difference. So they did send me to a specialist. I met him. And I was really upset because they were sending people through the HandyDART, which is the transport of coming into the doctor's office, and they said, Yeah, we'll stop at McDonald's on the way through it. I'm like, here, I really helped me and I'm sitting in this office, and you're not, you know, like, what am I doing here? And I was upset because I had a heart condition. Right? He wrote the notes, told me my blood pressure was uncontrollable, put me on five different medications, did a stress test and said you're going to have, you are going to have a stroke really, really soon, you need to do something about this today. So I took those five prescriptions he gave me and read them in the garbage, and then went to a traditional Chinese doctor who never spoke English. And you think, Well, why would you want to go to a doctor who doesn't speak English, because I needed it not to be a placebo effect, I needed in my own mind to be able to trust somebody and not take my knowledge, which is extensive in both sides of the field now, right? I needed to take somebody else's and trust their health, my health in their hands, right? So she did her pulse testing, she did the tongue testing, looking at, she could figure everything out, but you twist your neck a certain way. That acupuncture and she says, I fix. And that was it. She did that night, the blood went back to my heart when I went in. And now I'm not recommending this for everybody. But for me, this is how I chose to look at it.

Right. And I just want to say there that everybody has to make the right choice for themselves. There is no one size fits, All right, everybody comes to all of these different conditions or diagnoses in a different state of health. So you found the right avenue for you, the next person might also have uncontrolled hypertension, hypertension, but what that doctor did for you may not be the fix for them, right. So everybody does need to do their own investigation into their right path for them.

salutely. And so part of my investigation in that 40 days, until my next appointment with this cardiologist was I took my blood pressure three times a day. And I recognized after five days, eliminating night sheets brought my blood pressure to a normal state. Interesting by date. So again, the five took the histamine reaction to go back to normal blood pressure to come down. Now. I was taking a risk with my own health. I don't take a risk with anybody else's health. Somebody came to me with chest pain the other day and she says, Well, I want to go and do this. And I'm like, well, first of all, I want you to get an ECG. Because this is not something to fool around with. Right. And chest pain. It's a 911 call, you know, yeah. So come to me with chest pain and expect me to do something with food rail. You know, we have both systems working so yes, you know, she she was really really invested in her diagnosis of something else that she what she was doing was going through every alternative practitioner she possibly could every day without letting a treatment work. Right,

right. Right. Right, I

was so invested in healing, that she never got the healing component ready yet, right. And I like to say to people, if you are 10 years into this illness, it could take up to 10 months for you to be able to get back into homeostasis. And, you know, I don't know what's going on inside your body without the tests there. But even then, those tests are based on today's right. They're not necessarily based on a month from now or, you know, five days before or three days after they're based on right now, what's going on? And that's a great line. But let's look into it a little bit deeper, you know, and so where was I going with this is just like, take the time to realize that when you start a program, it is going to take time, and sometimes your symptoms will worsen? Absolutely. You know, especially when you're working on a detoxification. Yes,

exactly. I'm always talking to people about this and panicked people. Oh, my God, it's worse. And then you know, calming them down, because the body has to expel in a detox situation. First.

Yeah, obviously Better out than in. Exactly. And I was about character systems as well. I have explosive diarrhea now that I started taking this detox program. And I'm like, Yeah, Better out than in because it's that toxic to an Oregon, right? To that toxic stuff. Yeah. And you really want to get rid of that you don't want it to reabsorb in your blood system, you need it to be gone. But the mechanism of our body is when we ingest something when we eat it, and it's bad. We

can get Yeah, we have the gang reflex,

we get the gut reflex, right, we get rid of it as fast as we can. Now if it takes a little bit longer, because it's not as toxic to us, but still toxic. It has to hit the intestinal walls in the colon first, you know, get rid of it. And then that usually, I don't know if anybody's ever gone to Mexico and develop Montezuma's revenge, right. You know, generally, bad water or bad ice cubes a bit longer to get through the system. Yeah, yeah,

I just want to comment on your point about, you could have something for 10 years, and it could take 10 months to recover from, right. And so you have to give things time and you have to trust in the process, which is why having someone to guide you through versus trying to figure it all out on your own and going to Dr. Google, etc, is where you need to be right, because we can't all know everything. Right? So you know, you're the one with, you know, a racing heart or whatever, you're noticing something's going on with your body, will you have expertise in whatever it is that you do, but it doesn't mean you have expertise on now helping your body heal from whatever's going on, right. But the fact you have the awareness to seek the help, is what's really important. And, you know, I often say to people that, you know, this program, I'm putting you on as a six month program, or maybe, you know, but and they're like six months, they might, but how long did it take you to get here? And then they're like, oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, six months isn't really that long, in the grand scheme of things, right, especially when you have improved health and energy and better sleep and lower stress and all of that at the end of it. So very important to be guided through. I had a client the other day who I was in a conference, she had questions was trying to reach me, but because I was in a conference, I wasn't looking at my phone. And also I didn't, the number on the phone was coming up as a random number. And I honestly thought it was one of those calls that was kept telling me that there was a warrant out for my arrest rights. Why would I bother answering? So I didn't. And I didn't, because I was focused on the conference. I didn't notice that the same number he called a couple of times. Anyway, so finally she sends me an email, I really need to talk to you. And I said, Well, I'm in a conference. Can we talk later? No, I really need to talk to you. So I call her and she was in an absolute panic because she hadn't reached me in the first place. She went to literally went to Dr. Google and diagnosed yourself is pretty much I'm going to die tomorrow. Right? And people need to stay away from that. It doesn't help and I said to her, Okay, let's stop the Dr. Google because all it does is induced stress. And then she said, you know, you're right. I wasn't stressed before I started Going online? Oh, because how does somebody navigate through all the information? Some information could be correct. And then a whole lot of information can be absolutely wrong. Right. And so we had a good chat and she calmed down, and she was completely fine. And it's all good. But sometimes we do ourselves a disservice by trying to figure it all out by ourselves. Right? And in her case, you know, it's my fault. I was in a conference, I wasn't responding to the calls. But luckily, this all happened in the span of literally one hour, not three days.

Well, that's the problem with Google. And let's, let's be quite honest about that. It I, the top things that show up there are algorithms, there are people that it's the ability to pay the most for advertising, right? Oh, and let's be honest, like, I don't want to say the word but pharmaceuticals have a little bit more money and a little bit more investment in getting you on their product than I might have. So my investment is, are you invested? Yes. Like I don't nilly randomly take a client because they want me to take them when they're ready. Yes, I don't, I don't want them to be wasting their money until they're ready.

Well, and you can pull them, you can't lie with you that doesn't do anything. They have to be ready to do the work. You are there to guide them, but they have to do the work. They have to do the healing. You can't heal them, you simply guide them.

And that's a that's exactly the point that, you know, like a lot of people don't realize they come to me when you say you're going to fix me. No, no, you're going to fix yourself. Right now. Can I coach you is another word another way? Are you coachable? Are you ready to give up something, and I'm there's so my fees are quite high to work with me. Because again, it's not working with me for a month, you get me for six to eight months, or eight, six to six months to a year. Because that could be how long? It's going to take us to come there. And I always say by the end of that year or the end of that six months. I hope you're not talking to me anymore. Exactly. Oh, you've got it figured out yourself. Yes. No, you can say, oh, my gosh, this is it. Sherif. You know, I have had people come to me on referrals. And I had a referral from a doctor. And the doctor sent this person to me for their health mess. She's a trained nurse as well as having a lot of stress. And they Dr. Center to me for a meal plan. And I'm like, okay, great. I love doing meal plans said nobody. Listen, I don't like meal plans. Because it's then trying to decide what you like, and how difficult is it to follow a meal plan and how quickly you fall off of it. If I make it for you, right? I like to involve you. So I said to her with this meal plan. Tell me about your kitchen. She says, Well, I borrow a kitchen. But I like okay, you borrow a kitchen. What do you mean by that? She's like, yes, well, my landlord, I have a small crock pot or a small heating pad as a burner, and then I borrow my landlord's oven. Right? And I'm like, okay, so how often do you cook? She says, Oh, I don't know how to cook. And I like Okay, so you may be here for a meal plan. But actually, what I'm going to do is teach you how to cook. Yes. And what do we start with the simplest, most dense, nutritious food as possible? And stews. And I'm not a smoothie person. So I don't recommend a lot of smoothies, which is a little bit different. Yeah, a lot of nutritionists

no each to their own right. I do have my smoothie. And I love my smoothies. But it's not for everyone, which is where having all of this customized to the individual as opposed to you making a meal plan for them and telling them how they have to do it.

Absolutely, because what we have, I have found out if we are hateful, low blood sugar, and if we take a smoothie in we could get nauseous really quickly. And then think it must be the vitamin I'm taking. It must be something else because this is all nutritious, but it could be Slama too much sugar for you.

Yes, exactly.

And that's why we do the investigation. Yes, by when you know, I tried to go into a clinic to work. And I'm like, Oh, I can't take everybody every half hour and do 15 people. When I bring somebody into my practice, I bring you into me, right I feel you. I want to know you. I want to get to know your health your life. Style, because why would I want you to run a marathon, if you've never walked down the block before, you know, I really like to investigate your desires, your outcome, and then tweak it so that it can be the best outcome that you possibly can have.

I love that. And then that's where we're getting into personalized health or personalized wellness, right, which it's coming back to that no one size fits all. And what I also really love about what you said is that, I don't want you to be talking to me in six months, while they're going to be now talking to you as a friend, right. But they're not talking to as a client. And that's the same hope that I have for my clients. Because when they finish working with you, they have knowledge for life, they have knowledge they can share with their family and teach others, right. And so, I love that that's the desire as opposed to, you know, other times where you see that it's just, I want more money from you. So I'm just gonna keep you in this place where you're not quite well keep paying, right? And, you know, Let's call a spade a spade. That's what Big Pharma does. They optimize shareholder profit, over human health, they're not motivated to have you heal, they're motivated to have you buy their pill day in and day out, forevermore.

You know, that's, that is exactly the sad part of the pharmaceutical industry is their money is made on keeping you sick. Exactly. And as a nurse, when I was, so we had to call Mars. So it's the daily medicine that we give you and we tick it off, and, and we add all the new medicines in there. Oh, we don't look at the side effects. So we'll just give you another another medicine for the fat side effector or something like that. But when I started looking at brain health, one of the things that people never talked about was that about 80% of depression is I have found in the readings I have done now this is in my studies again, yeah, we all do studies from different areas. So that's recognized. So why it's great to find that practitioner who has your values, which is another important component together. And what I found out was that when people went on an antidepressant 80% of it usually related to blood sugars. But what happened when you started taking an antidepressant without changing the diet around was that we ended up having diabetes, and then when you end up having died on type two diabetes, because it alters the endocrine system, because you cannot take one thing for one organ of one of the entire endocrine system, which is quite intense, you know, we've got a thyroid and get it to Terry, we've got a thymus, we've got a pancreas, pancreas together, all these components that work together, trying to figure out what to do, right? On all of them being a part of the transaction, right? So if you've got too much insulin being pumped out all the time, because you got a high sugar load, because you're on an antidepressant, but slows down the insulin remove, re re releasing, right, then you've got another problem. And that other problem means he could end up having hypertension, right along with the blood sugars and the depression. And then you have, oh my gosh, you got hypertension, but then your cholesterol could be going up. Exactly. But why is your cholesterol going up? Because we're lowering your cholesterol and your thing? Aren't we supposed to have lower cholesterol? No. Different types of cholesterol? Yes, every cholesterol, we need cholesterol for every cell, every hormone every steroid our body makes. I mean, we need to have the facts. And that's where we go into somebody who has, I don't know, I do my first intake at 90 minutes, because I don't know exactly what I'm going to be. Yes, I know what I'm asking you. I don't know in the component of what's going to come up with. Exactly,

exactly and how long that might take and you have to keep digging deeper, right peeling back the layers of the onion. Yeah. My first intake is an hour and I have them fill out the intake form first and then we go through it but yes, it's just as detailed and again, your poor doctor that is limited to a five or a seven minute appointment. How can they possibly understand everything that's going on with you, right and look at all of these. You You just mentioned the endocrine system, but then how is that affecting the other symptoms? Well, you can't get into that in five or seven minutes. So one because I wouldn't want to do it that way.

I look at somebody who comes into my office. And this is very, very common. We get a thyroid disorder. And so a thyroid disorder can show up in a lot of different symptoms of a thyroid, but yet the test of say it's normal, because this happened to me. Yes. So I deliberately did a few things to show that it was my thyroid. And that was I could not grow hair on my legs. Right? Your arms. Right, right. What's that got to do with it? Well, it has to do with my circulatory system. But the circulatory system is theoretically related to my thyroid. Yes, all of these things go hand in hand. But, but it showed normal. So what were the other things? Oh, I snort. Right. But that's a normal thing. Oh, but no, it's not normal. And it's an enlarged area in here that could be giving me I'm blocking the airway blocking the airway while I'm asleep, you know, and what were the other things, hypertension? You know, yes. My tests were all normal. Right? To a functional doctor. Absolutely. It showed that I wasn't converting, but my conversion factors were good, right. But I also had mercury toxicity. And that was normal for people my age, because we all made with mercury in school. We didn't realize the dangers. Yeah. Yeah. These are all things that I go back. And I look at the history of IT. Yeah. As it turned out, it was a traditional Chinese doctor who fixed my thyroid. Right, you know? Yeah. But even though it was normal, so I have to go and keep on investigating until it feels right for me. Exactly. It was right for me, then. Okay, this is what's working on my body. And, you know, again, sadly, our physicians do not have the time to do this.

And they don't necessarily have those the tools, those labs that dig deeper, right? I mean, before, I know that, I asked my doctor, I wanted to have all four thyroid markers tested before I actually could run my own labs, this was multiple years ago. And it was just more of a baseline, like, I want to know where everything's at. And she said, Well, I can't do that, I can only test your TSH. And if that's normal, we don't go any further. And I'm like, but that could be normal. But my, you know, free T three and free T four might not be converting. And if they're not in the normal range, then that's an early indication of something going wrong. And instead of waiting, however much longer for my TSH to reflect that I could address it now. She couldn't do it. She's not allowed to right. So the power of functional medicine labs for people is really helpful. Because we can do all of that I can run that lab right now. In fact, I've just run my own and got my results yesterday, because I do it every year. Because again, it's I have my baseline, and then I get the early warning signs. And I can run labs that will show metal toxicities, and mineral deficiencies and vitamin deficiencies and all of these things. So it's very powerful. And people just need to know that they are available.

Absolutely, you know, because, again, it's not that the doctor didn't want you there hands are tied again. Why would you waste money on getting badly now?

You that's exactly your healthy? I can't justify it. Yeah. Right. Because they're all getting checked on their costs now.

Yeah. And the big one right now that we have a lot of controversy over is vitamin D. And, you know, I really want to talk about vitamin D because we live in Canada. Yes. And right now on we're both on the same, you know, on opposite sides of the pond. But it's a pretty dreary day out there yet. And I'm going to be going two months a jury Yes. And so that means I am not storing because vitamin D, which we know is now a hormone we stored in our fat, we accumulate it through the sunny seasons that we do not accumulate it if we're wearing sunscreen, you know, and we store this vitamin D until a certain amount of time period and then it starts dissipating in our bodies and then slowly start getting a little symptoms like maybe more joint pain, maybe a little bit more inflammation, maybe a little bit of moodiness maybe. I mean, Vitamin D is important for every component of our body to work. I agree. I agree. You know, but we don't test for vitamin D. Why

routinely I know it's so cheap, it could be it could be tested for so easily. So I love talking about vitamin D and let's have this conversation because first of all in In Canada, and in fact, the northern us, it's 85% of people are deficient, I would actually say in Canada, it's 100% are deficient if you are not supplementing, because we don't have enough hours of strong enough sunlight on our naked skin for long enough, throughout the year, there just aren't enough days of having that in sunlight. And if there were, we're not running around in bikinis in order to absorb it on our skin, right? So we all must supplement in Canada, end of story, and including the northern us. And it's interesting, because I started supplementing, probably about five years ago now. And this at the same time that I asked for the thyroid, I went in asking for a whole bunch, right? I was allowed to do the vitamin D lab, but I have to pay for it. But that's fine. I think it was, I don't know, I did a whole bunch. It was either $16 or 65. Either way, I paid for my vitamin D. And when I got the results, my doctor was shocked. And she said, I haven't seen anybody else except my elite athletes have their vitamin D level in the optimal range. How come you're in the optimal range? And I said, Because I supplement. And she was okay, we'll keep doing it. Right. So obviously I did. But then I made a mistake last year, when COVID hit, and things calmed down, the world shut down, I had more time on my hands, I thought I'm going to spend more time outdoors. So instead of taking 4000 iu or four drops a day, I decided I'm going to just take two. And I like to play with things on myself, right? So I started taking two and I was going out for walks every day, 45 minutes to an hour, and it was warm. So I was in T shirts, I was in shorts that my skin was exposed. And then I ran my own vitamin D lab. In September of last year, my levels had dropped from 55 to 42. In just six months. Right. So then I thought, Okay, I'm going to, obviously, that's not enough, I still need to be supplementing. So I went back to the 4000 iu every day. And I will never go below that. Because clearly living in Canada, that's what I need. And I just ran my labs again. And I'm back into that normal range. And it is so important and particularly important right now, because it's also one of the you know, supplements slash hormones that are so helpful for people with this current pandemic. Yeah, yeah, numbers that if your vitamin D levels are sufficient and not even optimal, sufficient 34 or higher, you will fare much better than if your levels are lower. Yeah, so easy to implement. And it's so inexpensive.

But we have to make sure we get in the right supplementation. So it has to be emulsified in fat, because it's a fat based. Yes. Thank you. No, I like a liquid because it's more absorbable Yes, I don't have to worry about what my digestive system is doing. And plus, I actually had to go up to 15,000 international units a couple years ago because, like you I felt pretty healthy. I thought until I didn't feel healthy. Right? I realized, Wow, am I ever deficient in vitamin D, I didn't get tested, I just went with muscle testing my own testing, my body started feeling good with I went up to 15,000 and then dropped it down to five. Right? Once I started getting feeling great again, right now, you know, I walked around all summer in my bathing suit with in my bikini, eating fresh fruit. And I was seeing as I was putting on a couple pounds around my belly. But what I'm doing is I'm storing the vitamin D with the chemicals and vital nutrients that come from the fruit right now in myself so that I can be able to utilize it longer throughout the winter. And you know, I don't know if that's true yet. I'll find out with my experimentation because I'm a scientist who likes to use myself. Yes. I don't use anybody else and get you know, like, Yeah, let's experiment with what taking out wheat will do to your to brain health. Majority of it is gets rid of depression, it gets xiety You know, stuff like that, you know, like let's experiment that but when I'm talking, experimenting, like whether it's the vitamin D and walking around in a bikini all summer while I'm out picking blueberries and eating them. That's my own experimentation. I can't tell everybody to go out and do that. But it's because I want to know exactly what's going on in my body and my body, my health and my responsibility. Yes. And, you know, I was fortunate. 30 years ago, I went to a cardiologist who turned out to be a general practitioners who is really big in functional medicine. And I went to him for postpartum depression. And the day that I was going in, I canceled my appointment, because I felt pretty good that day, which is a lot of us do. And it goes back to what you were saying earlier. So he phoned me up and he said, Cheryl, you feeling good today? And I'm like, Yeah, I don't need to come in talk to you about depression. He says, No, you do need to come in. Because I want a baseline on these days. You're feeling good. Yes. And I like, Ah, I need to come in and talk to you about this, but it's a good day. Well, you know, what he said to me, is I had, it was a good day. He did my labs. He did everything like that. I was feeling very optimistic. But he said to me, you know, you had two C sections in a year and a half. You had three friends die one week, you had both my parents had life threatening illnesses. My husband was a commercial fisherman. So that meant he was gone all the time. Right? Have a support system I was rescued. And he said to me, you have all of this going on? How could you be nutritionally fit, right? And he gave me a four day prescription. And it was like a four day prescription. Yeah. And it wasn't even to me, it was to my husband, right, but had to come home. Look, after the kids for four days, I went to my first nation's best friend's mom. And she gave me bone broth. She gave me dark greens. I stayed in bed for four days, she gave me the traditional healing that my body needed for the MAL nourishment that I had. And if it wasn't for that doctor telling me I was malnourished. Instead of saying you have postpartum or you have depression, he just said, you're malnourished. He was a game changer for the rest of my life. Yeah,

I love that you've given me head to toe goosebumps. Yeah, I love that. I love that story. So true. So thank you. So so excuse me so so much for being here today, I could talk to you for hours. I've thoroughly enjoyed this. And I love to ask all of my guests as we're wrapping up. What does don't wait for your wake up call mean to you?

Well, okay, so don't wait for your wake up call to hit you. To me, it means don't wait until you're in that bed. Given your final diagnosis. I was a nurse, I watched people take that wake up call and not be able to reverse reverse what was going on the damage that they've done, you know, take charge of your health today. It may be a little symptom, but that little symptom shouldn't be going on in your body we are made in the best possible mass solution, whatever you want to call this whole temple, we are made for it to work optimally. The minute you start feeling something not working, seek out what is going on. Because you, your body will give you symptoms far longer than it will give you the disease. So listen to your body.

I love that, thank you. And if you can let the audience know there are probably people listening that would love the opportunity to work with you, if you can let them know how they can reach out to you that would be fabulous.

Um, I keep a very low social media profile, for lots of reasons. So the best way to reach out to me is through email, which is Cheryl M prince@hotmail.com. And we'll get the link set up there. Or you can actually give me a call because I love talking on the phone. I think it's more personable. And I will give you my phone number to be added to the link of my email.

Perfect. Thank you so much. So we'll have all of that in the show notes. So any last messages to motivate the audience to get started on their health journey today?

You know, the one thing I found out that when I started my health journey was it's amazing how quick you can start feeling better. And even if you are healthy and going with alternate eating the normal way eating the standard North American way. It will catch up with you. So take the time to honor your body to honor your temple and realize that this is such a gift we have to be in this body. Why not look after it the way we would look after our house or our cars.