525 How Seeking Holistic Health Saved My Life, Addicted To Wellness with Ashley James and David DeHaas

Learn True Health with Ashley James

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525: How Seeking Holistic Health Saved My Life, David DeHaas

https://learntruehealth.com/how-seeking-holistic-health-saved-my-life-david-dehaas

Grab Ashley James's book Addicted to Wellness and transform your health! Get it here: learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness

When I was 19, my health hit rock bottom—I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and infertility, conditions I never imagined facing so young. This pivotal moment propelled me into the world of holistic health, a journey that led to incredible transformations not just for me but for countless others. Join me, Ashley James, as I chat with David DeHaas from the Whole Body Detox Show about my new book, "Addicted to Wellness," and the magic of holistic healing.

Highlights:

• Healing Holistically With David DeHaas
• From Illness to Wellness Journey
• Early Interest in Holistic Health
• Impact of Antibiotics on Lactobacillus Reuteri
• Supporting Gut Health With Microbes
• Addicted to Wellness Book Discussion
• Functional Medicine and Holistic Healing
• Content Creation Challenges and Collaboration

Intro:

Hello True Health Seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast. Today's a fun episode because I'm the one in the hot seat. David DeHaas from the Whole Body Detox Show interviews me on Episode 179 of his show. So I have taken that Episode 179 from the Whole Body Detox Show, David DeHaas being the host and I am placing it here so that y'all can listen to our interview. I was just jumping on his show and I was checking it out this morning and his latest interview, which he published earlier this month, was with Andy Wakefield.

I had Andy Wakefield on my show a few years ago. Be fun to have him back because Dr. Wakefield certainly has some more information and he's been in, I think, a few more documentaries since, so that'd be fun to have him back. I love when I get to come together with like-minded people like David DeHaas. David DeHaas has also been on my show. He runs an amazing detox clinic. I think it's in Idaho. Forgive me, I'm pretty sure it's like it's so close. Idaho is like next door to Washington state, but people actually fly in from out of state, from out of country. They fly in to do, he has a week long and I think he has like a 10 day or two week long detox where they feed you and they do a whole series of colonics and they rebuild your gut, and him and I have had some really interesting off air conversations about how people have come back from the brink and he's had some really interesting experiences with doctors. When doctors wake up when their own medicine fails them and I have a lot of those interviews. If you've been listening, over 500 interviews, I have a lot of holistic doctors who started out as medical doctors in the allopathic, drug-based medical field and then they themselves came up against some illness and their system of medicine couldn't help them and that's when their brain exploded and they went my gosh, we've been taught a lie. We've been taught this lie which is prevalent. We are all bathed in this lie and that is that the MD drug based medicine is the only legitimate medicine out there, that you should always go to an MD. That type of doctor and every other type of doctor is a quack, or every other type of doctor is a quote unquote, and I'm doing little air quotes, alternative, meaning something less than not helpful, something less than and , maybe those alternative doctors might like massage you or something, but they're not legitimate because they don't give you drugs and it's been a lie that they've been feeding us. It's PR marketing that they've been feeding us for over 100 years. I'm not going to go deep down this rabbit hole today, but you can. It's a pretty interesting rabbit hole to go down.

So these doctors wake up when they realize that their system of medicine doesn't have all the answers. Not every system does. That's the point. We should not give the power to any one system, and I'm pretty sure that applies to everything in life. Don't give all the power to one type of school system, to one type of food manufacturer, to one type of government. Don't give the power and all the control and all the attention to one system, because that's not how life works. We should have access to, and the freedom to have access to, many types of therapies and healing.

So MDs that wake up and go, wow, I need to go outside of my system of medicine to find the answers. Then they find holistic medicine or functional medicine and then they heal their body and then they become a born again holistic health expert and they jump on podcasts like mine. Well, David DeHaas, the host of the interview you're about to listen to, he's had several of these experiences where very prominent MDs come to him unable to eat almost anything. Their gut is totally destroyed, they have eliminated most foods in their diet because they no longer can tolerate food and they get transformed by going to his clinic. They do something like 10 days of colonics and juicing and all the other wonderful therapies to rebuild the microbiome at David DeHaas' clinic and they're able to then walk away after ten days or two weeks, able to eat almost anything and tolerate it, and it's so cool. It's so cool that we can do that level of intense healing. So, anyways, there's my plug for David's clinic and his podcast, the Whole Body Detox Show. You can also check out David DeHaas' episode on my podcast as well. I had him on a few years ago and it was wonderful to have him on. then it was great to reconnect when he saw that I had published my book recently this year and he said come on my show and let's talk about it. So this interview today is a great conversation about holistic health and we dive into some wonderful ways in which we can help support the body and healing itself.

If you haven't seen my book yet, please check it out. Go to learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness that's all one word learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness or you can just go to Amazon and type in Addicted to Wellness by Ashley James. It's a workbook. It's a lot of fun.

I have taken the accumulation of the last 12 years of working in this industry, in the holistic health field, working with thousands of clients. Before, I worked in the holistic health field, I worked with clients for 20 years. I can't believe that. You kind of like look back and you go, my gosh, like in my mind the 90’s were 10 years ago. I'm an 80s baby and it's just wild to think that I've been working with clients that long. I was working, as I want to call it, life coach. I was doing breakthrough sessions with people using neuro linguistic programming and timeline therapy. So I've been working with clients for a long time and this book is an accumulation of all my knowledge from 20 years of working with people and over 500 episodes talking in depth with holistic health experts.

The book I made it fun. I made it light and I made it impactful. So if you want to take your health to the next level, no matter where you are, this book meets you where you are and you will be able to, through a series of fun challenges, take your health to the next level. So Invite you to jump on it, to try it. Even if you have five minutes a day, even if you have 10 minutes a day, you can do this book. If you have a busy schedule, you can do this book.

I wanted to make it so that every single person could fit it into their life. So get it Addicted to Wellness. Get my book. It's a workbook, so you get to actually do things. That's where rubber meets the road. You get to experience health changes as you build up your body, and that's what we talk about today in today's episode, among other things. So enjoy today's episode. Please check out David DeHaas' podcast, the Whole Body Detox Show, and please share my podcast with those you care about. This is a grassroots movement. My goal is to help over a million people to get their health back, and I can't do it without your help. So you are part of that. You're the ripple that helps turn this ripple into a tidal wave to help as many people as possible to learn true health.

Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 525.

David DeHaas (0:08:34.737)

Good morning everyone. David DeHaas, your host of the Whole Body Detox show from Living Waters Wellness Center, where miracles begin by healing from within, and today I have a very kindred spirit on the show today Ms. Ashley James. Ms. Ashley James has a podcast of her own called Learn True Health. You've done what some over 516 plus episodes and growing, does a fantastic job, so you can check that out. She's an entrepreneur, podcaster, author and we're having on because she just wrote an amazing book called, Addicted to Wellness. Ashley is a bit like me. You went through a lot of a health journey. There's a picture of it right there. A journey, much like myself, and we had to figure out how to save our lives, and she did.

So we're here teaching others. Amazing! She's also a massage therapist, a Reiki master, trained in neuro holistic programming, timeline therapy, hypnosis, nutritional coach. She went after it and grabbed all the different things to put them in her toolbox or wellness toolbox so she can help others, which is awesome. Ashley James, welcome to the show.

Ashley James (0:09:44.683)

Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.

David DeHaas (0:09:46.763)

Everyone has their unique story, from sickness to wellness, and you've got one amazing story. So maybe give us a little bit of background and we'll get into your book here a little bit.

Ashley James (0:10:00.718)

It's like rags to riches to rags to riches. So when I was six, when I was really young, I didn't know any better and I thought this is just how life is, but I would always have a sore throat, I was always tired and I'd wake up in the morning unable to open my eyes because my eyes were crusted over and I'd have to peel away the crust in my eyes. They were sealed shut.

I just remember being really tired and the constant sore throats and that was my life until I was about six years old. then my mom, she had been put on antibiotics for the common cold, basically, and ended up staying on antibiotics for several months, because this is just in the 80s, what doctors did, and I guess some doctors to this day still do that.

So she ran her own business and didn't take the time like a weekend just to relax or a week just to like let her body recover. So she went to prescription after prescription to overcome an infection and gave herself a wicked case of candida. She finally discovered a naturopathic doctor who actually did colon hydrotherapy in his clinic. This is Dr. D'Adamo the original, not his son, but Dr. D'Adamo back in the eighties had a clinic in Toronto, Canada, where I'm from, and my mom went to him, got some colon hydrotherapy and also cleaned up her diet and she started to get better. So she intuitively said, well, if it's good for me, it's probably good for my daughter.

I remember, at six years old, being in his clinic. I remember looking him in the face as he took a drop of my blood and figured out I was an O blood type, looked at my eyes for urology, looked in my ear, examined my throat because I had that constant sore throat. he looked at me and he said you are allergic to milk, yeast, wheat and sugar. Stay away from them. Now, even at the age of six I knew that were the ingredients. Those were the ingredients in my favorite chocolate bar, Coffee Crisp. If you're from Canada, you know Coffee Crisp. To this day I can still remember what it tastes like. It tastes like what it sounds. It's crunchy, it's chocolatey, it's coffee flavored. Who wouldn't love that? I said to him, when can I eat a Coffee Crisp? he said once every blue moon. At the time I thought a blue moon was every month.

So I got excited, but I soon found out it meant once in a very long while. We came home and my mom tore through the kitchen, got rid of all the processed food, all the wheat, all the dairy, all the sugar, and we ate basically paleo, like what Dr. D'Adamo coined the O blood type diet, and overnight my sore throat went away. My energy, I couldn't even say it came back. I had it for the first time and I no longer woke up feeling sick. I no longer woke up with sore throats, I no longer woke up with sleep in my eyes. I would wake up, jump out of bed and just go, go, go, go go, just twelve hours straight and then go right to sleep and I had amazing health. That was from six to thirteen.

At thirteen, I rebelled and I started eating like all my friends. My mom was really strict around food, and out of love, but also coming from fear and just as a parent now I see how important it is to teach children why that food is good or bad and not just restrict without knowledge. So I ran towards all the food I was allowed to eat, and I gave myself chronic infections, type 2 diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, polycystic ovarian syndrome. Did I mention type 2 diabetes, and infertility. By the time I was nineteen, I was infertile and the doctor said, after doing a battery of tests, that I'd never have kids. So I was so sick from thirteen to nineteen. I created all these illnesses in my body and I was just feeling so horrible.

David DeHaas (0:14:06.600)

Were you seeing Dr. D’Adamo then?

Ashley James (0:14:08.606)

No, my mom switched back to an MD and that MD ended up killing my mom and that was a big wake up call for me. I don't know why she didn't. I guess he got so famous. He ended up not being in the Toronto clinic and so she started seeing another naturopathic clinic and maybe didn't like that guy as much.

I really wish she had stuck with holistic medicine, because she'd still be here today and my life would have been very different. I wouldn't be sitting here with you. But this is my story. We have to learn from our past and also appreciate our story so that we can appreciate who we are, where we are now and then build the future we want. So let's learn from the past.

Processed foods are how I develop those illnesses, and eating clean and then lifestyle changes and finding the right supplements. So supplements are like the mortar but the bricks. You can't out-supplement a bad diet. You can't out-exercise a bad diet right. You can't give yourself enough colon hydrotherapy when you have a bad diet.

It all comes down to using your food as medicine. You're building your body. You're building every cell in your body with what you're eating. So I had to dial in how I ate. I had to go through emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically the transformation to be able to shed those illnesses. I did. I learned what I needed to do. There were many dark years where I would cry myself to sleep, where I was constantly hungry, just going on, the blood sugar swings, feeling out of control, and my liver was so inflamed that anytime I did go on a diet my liver would just stick out. It would be painful.

David DeHaas (0:16:00.329)

Oh wow, I was like that at one time I didn't know what was going on.

Ashley James (0:16:08.465)

I finally figured out that it was heavy metal toxicity, probably because my body had a really hard time detoxifying. I've been MTHFR and so I had to really support gentle liver detox, support my liver and in doing that. But every time I went to lose weight, I could taste heavy metals in my mouth and that and my eyes would burn. I could taste heavy metals in my mouth.

I think it's from the accumulation of secondhand smoke and drinking soda. I don't know, just any kind of exposure to heavy metals. We have so much exposure to heavy metals we don't even realize. If you also have a problem with detoxifying, then they get accumulated in the body. I had accumulated a lot and I’ve spent the last seven years working on detoxifying the heavy metals. I have a sauna, Sunlighten Sauna, which I absolutely adore and that we can sweat out the heavy metals gently. I have a PES, which is an ionic foot spa, a Platinum Energy System. I've had people on my show, Learn True Health Podcast discussing how they work, very gentle detox without having to do things like chelators. I do also love Chlorella, which there's only a handful of companies I'd recommend. One of them is EnergyBits, and I did have Catherine Arnston, the creator of EnergyBits, on my show as well. So those are really good episodes to check out. so just through these different modalities I was able to detox the heavy metals.

But before that, back in 2008, when I was at the peak of my illness, my husband and I watched a documentary and he wanted to help me, but we just didn't know. You get to this point where you're sick, of being sick, but all you know is MD medicine, all you know is go to the doctor, they maybe do blood work and then they give you a drug and that just wasn't cutting it. I was just getting sicker and sicker under the watch of the MD.

I'd remembered when I was six, I went to holistic medicine. I had to go back before my rebellious era and remember what I had learned when I was very young from the naturopath. When we watched this documentary, it was about eating whole foods, avoiding processed foods, and eating organic. They had interviewed the original CEO of Whole Foods and he said vote with your fork, shop the perimeter of the grocery store, eat organic.

We did that. We didn't give up dairy yet, we didn't give up meat yet. We just shopped the perimeter so we stopped going down the aisles and we chose only organic. So some would call that like the pseudo paleo diet. You're just eating fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds. We were doing meat and dairy, but we chose organic and dairy, but we chose organic.

In that one month of primarily cutting up processed food and eating organic, my chronic infections went away. I still felt like crap, but I no longer needed constant antibiotics and I thought, wow, we did one change and one of my major problems went away. So what's the next step? We just took these baby steps where we did one change, kind of like a challenge, okay, for the next few days we're going to do this, for the next week or next month we're going to do this. We did one challenge of another and some things didn't work and some things did, but that's how we figured it out and we eventually cut out all dairy.

Dairy is the hardest, because we're actually chemically addicted to dairy, many people know this. For those who don’t, mother's milk, cow milk for a calf, goat milk for a kid, in order to make the infant want to drink it, put forth the effort to find the nipple and suckle. God in his infinite wisdom made breast milk addictive. Then we take milk from another species, we concentrate it into cheese. The thing that triggers the brain, the addiction in the brain, is in cheese, in concentrated form. So we are addicted to dairy and that's the hardest thing out of all the animal products to kick is cheese and dairy.

So we decided to go dairy free, reluctantly, and overnight my husband's adult acne went away within three days. He had cystic acne covered his entire back. It was really gross. It was constantly exploding and painful and he was ashamed and never went shirtless because of it and he had pitting all over his back, his face, but it was mostly in his back and in his chest too. A hundred percent of his acne, within three days of removing dairy, went away. He had never in his entire life not drunk dairy or eaten cheese. So that’s a little challenge.

David DeHaas (0:21:39.233)

We were supposed to have raw milk and of course there was Hershey's chocolate which was advertised heavily on the tv and I love my milk with my Hershey's chocolate. So you got pus with sugar and I always had acne, I had allergies, I had all this stuff and no wonder I had all these allergies. No wonder I had all this problem. My mother took me to what I call a drill, fill and build dentist, from age five on he's got two more cavities, Mrs. DeHaas.

Ashley James (0:22:10.520)

Oh, you mean, you have a boat payment, Mr. Dentist.

David DeHaas (0:22:14.396)

Yes, and here, have a lollipop on the way out. Some more sugar. Food is even worse today. It's really bad chemicals, just pure chemicals.

Ashley James (0:22:34.067)

We go down the cereal aisle. My mom was super strict about cereal in our household. There couldn't be any sugar in it and we had options like there were a lot of options for zero added sugar. I challenge you to find a zero added sugar cereal. I can only find one that's gluten free, also, because we don't eat barley and oats in our home. My son is actually allergic to them, but that's what Dr. D'Adamo told me: Don't eat those.

What I've seen with my mentors, I've been trained by several naturopathic doctors and they say 100% of their clients benefit from removing those grains because we're not cows. We don't have the stomach processing power to process, just like eating dairy. Eating cheese is not necessarily healthy for you, but we feel good eating it because we're addicted. So we keep doing it and we're habituated to the damage. You have to remove it for a while before you go. Oh wow, my migraines are gone. Oh wow, my stiff joints are gone. Oh wow, my vision's getting better. You start to see things clear up, the inflammation goes away and things you thought were completely unrelated, like, oh, my dry eye is gone, completely unrelated, but that's a sign of inflammation and you remove that food that is constantly insulting the body.

David DeHaas (0:23:56.078)

When you went to Peter D’Adamo, did he offer colonics? Did he offer them to you as a child?

Ashley James (0:24:02.368)

No, I was a child, no, he didn't offer. I’m really actually was interested in it. My mom would tell me stories because she'd come home from her colonics and I'd be super interested. I have actually interested in holistic health since I was six. My mom had a newsletter from Dr. D'Adamo and I would sit on my mom's bed and she would read it to me and I remember in the 80’s she read me an article he wrote about probiotics and I was fascinated. Acidophilus was like the only thing they knew about back then. I was super fascinated. She read another one about antioxidants and oxidative stress. I imagine the bullet pierces, the loose molecule bouncing through the body just like harming the DNA. He wrote this beautiful article about it and I was just fascinated. I was fascinated about how the body works in health, from that holistic standpoint.

David DeHaas (0:24:59.600)

Think about this, in 1992, Newsweek, on its cover I was selling nutritional supplements and they were just starting to talk about free radicals. People would say, DeHaas, you're just a free radical yourself, that's a rock band, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean they just dismissed it like that's stupid. What are you talking about, free radicals? What's an oxidant? Of course now it's common knowledge. Most people do know what an antioxidant is, but it is very interesting how, in 40 years, 30 years, basically, we finally got to accept this.

Ashley James (0:25:35.297)

The mainstream will catch up very slowly.

David DeHaas (0:25:39.903)

The community, basically slamming it, saying, there's nothing to that, you don't want those vitamins, that's just a waste. That was crazy!

Ashley James (0:25:47.096)

The same doctors only a few years before were recommending camel cigarettes. So we just have to remember how far we've come since our grandparents or since our parents' generation. The American Medical Association was fine with recommending camel cigarettes. So just got to like, take their advice with a grain of salt and then question everything, question everything.

One thing that Dr. D'Adamo did in his colonics that I haven't seen done anywhere else is he added a cactus enzyme that would break down the biofilm, and I was always fascinated about that and I haven't seen anyone else do that. So my mom told me I was like I'd ask her what they add to the water? One of her friends was from Japan, because there's a little viewing window to see what's coming out of you and they watched a giant worm come out of her, I guess from eating sushi or something.

David DeHaas (0:26:46.611)

Yes, all the time, all the time. Wild Hookworms, liver flukes. We got a whole manual down here. A book of pictures of clients have snapped the picture when they're doing their colonic and as they've seen the bugs, or at home in the toilet a lot of time it comes out, we loosen them up and they go home and they poop. It’s fascinating.

You go do a test. If you go to a doctor and get a test, 98% of the time it's going to be negative because they only test for five. The bugs don't want to come out on a poop and say hey, here I am. They've buried themselves in the coastal lining and they're attached. You got to go after them with all things zippers, herbs, our pulse frequency machine and then the colonics to flush them out.

Ashley James (0:27:32.817)

I wonder why they don't show up on colonic or colonoscopies, or do they?

David DeHaas (0:27:41.224)

I don’t know. I've never done a colonoscopy.

Ashley James (0:27:45.179)

Right and nor should you. There's a lot of people that die doing just regular colonoscopies. You turn that camera the wrong way, they're piercing your colon. Also the anesthesia, you could die from the anesthesia there's complications.

David DeHaas (0:28:04.451)

We've had clients come back and say, my friend, they did it, they pierced it or I don't know why, but they can't get it totally sterilized and they got a bug from a foreign country from the equipment and it killed it.

That was a my gosh story number of years ago, not four years ago, I guess not too long ago, anyway, yes, so there are some risks with that, but we do have clients now that come and do colonics, colon hydrotherapy before they go do colonoscopy, because it's just so much easier than sitting on a toilet all night drinking the toxic goop that they give you so that's good

So you went on your healing path. Of course you said you're taking antibiotics constantly. Oh, that's so bad for the gut.

Ashley James (0:29:00.895)

It is. Actually, Dr. Joel Fuhrman has a really good book. I had him on my show and he talked about this one fact that's in his book. I'm going to remember the name of it it's fast food genocide. Within the first few chapters of the book he talks about the cancer rates go up with every dose of antibiotics.

David DeHaas (0:29:26.646)

Yes, we had a doctor here who went through our 10-day healing retreat. She has 10 straight years of antibiotics. She can only drink what I'm drinking today during this interview, cucumber juice. It tastes great too, but that's all she could eat. When she got done with the 10-day healing retreat, she could actually eat. She said, David, I ate a steak. Last night it tasted so good.

She’s doing colonics, a lot of colonics. In fact, when she moved to Boise, she told her husband I'll only move to a city that's got a good colon hydrotherapist. So they scouted out cities, they scouted us out first, but how sad.

I mean so many people have been like that, like you, they've been on constant antibiotics. My dad recently had a kidney infection like kidney stone last year and he had a stroke and he had some things going on and they just started giving him antibiotics.

I said and of course I'm not there, I'm five hours away and of course now what he's pooping? He's got diarrhea all the time. When I finally just got that changed around. Now we've got a constipation issue but he was like he was shitting his. I mean, he was just David. I crap my pants all the time.

He's so upset and he's afraid to go out in public, so he doesn't. and hasn't been out in public for a while and about six months and because of that he said, hey, I was able to fart today and I didn't poop my pants.

Good win dad.

Ashley James (0:31:05.431)

So I have a family member who was on several courses of antibiotics and then got chronic diarrhea to the point where she also couldn't go outside, and the times that we had to take her to a doctor's room or something, it was like running down her leg. It was so sad and you lost all your dignity. It's just so sad. I had an interview about lactobacillus reuteri with Dr William Davis, who wrote the book Wheat Belly. I've had him on my show three times. It was the second interview I did and at the time I was recovering from PTSD, from losing my daughter, and I figured out, through the help of a friend who was a psychologist, what I was experiencing was PTSD. I'm interviewing him and he's talking about how lactobacillus reuteri is native to humans and should be in your gut but it is not in your gut in the modern world because one course of antibiotics wipes it completely from your system for the rest of your life.

And it gets passed down through mother's milk. So if your mother was on one course of antibiotics before you, let's say you've never had antibiotics, but your mom had antibiotics, then you don't have lactobacillus reuteri. So just think about how many people who are living in the modern world, who are not living in Nepal, in the mountains. They've never had antibiotics. I don't think we could find someone whose generations you could count, all the generations going up, who's not had antibiotics. So it's very rare to have lactobacillus reuteri naturally in your system, but it should be there. Not having it means that we naturally don't make as much serotonin for the whole body. Serotonin converts to melatonin. Melatonin is an antioxidant for all the cells, not just the brain, and that's just one of the effects. It also increases collagen production. So now we have a lot less collagen production. So it goes down the list. So if you take it and how you take it, is you make a yogurt out of it.

I figured out I have made over 200 batches of this yogurt with cashews. I figured out if you're allergic to cashews, you can try it with other like, it does not taste good. I'm sorry. The coconut version, the soy version, doesn't taste good. The cashew version tastes amazing. It tastes awesome and it's a 36 hour ferment. I have it. It's free on my website, just lactobacillus reuteri yogurt, cashew yogurt, on learntruehealth.com.

I made it for this family member and three days later she called me up and she said make me more because this is the only thing that stopped my diarrhea. It ended her diarrhea. So I went and did a little bit more digging and I found out that, obviously, we know your good microbiome gets wiped out when you do antibiotics. Well, one of the side effects is that chronic diarrhea and one of the solutions is lactobacillus reuteri. So we reintroduce the lactobacillus reuteri into the gut and it calms everything down. It gets the gut making serotonin again, gets the gut making collagen again, like it's helping so much. So it ended the diarrhea for her.

Then it had for me, surprise, surprise, it helped me overcome the depression. I noticed that within the same day I took it. The first one I made was out of soy milk, because I had a hermetically sealed soy milk so I just fermented that it tasted horrible but I drank it and I've never taken an antidepressant but I told my friend who's a mental health counselor after three days of drinking, I go, if antidepressants worked, I feel like I'm on one right now. I am feeling happy for the first time in over a year, I was just feeling happy in my body. So there's something to that lactobacillus reuteri and it's just one, one of the thousands of healthy gut microbes that we're supposed to have in our gut. So there's so much to support the gut.

David DeHaas (0:35:33.815)

Think about the colon, five to seven feet, small intestine, about 25 to 30 feet, the surface area the size of a tennis court. There's so much surface area and all these little bugs, good bugs, bad bugs, and it gets tipped out of balance so easily by. You go to one doctor, you got a little infection, here's an antibiotic. Next thing you know, you've taken six rounds and in some cases people get C diff and they actually die from C diff. So now, there's actually companies paying you for good poop. Now they're making tablets.

When I first got into this business, I met a doctor and he was so excited about what I was doing. True story. I've talked about this before on the show. His dad was dying in the hospital in California and he worked at the hospital here in Boise and his dad had C diff and his dad was just, just get me home, Mark, just get me home I just want to die at home.

So he's doing some research and he discovered I could put an implant back in his colon intestinal tract. Maybe that makes a difference. So he went to the hospital and he made his proposal. He says let's do a fecal implant. There's one doctor there from Europe that says, hey, no problem, I'd be happy to do it. We do that in Europe all the time. The doctor there says no, it's too much risk, infection, blah, blah, blah. He says darn it.

So he went home and he got a very healthy person, his daughter. She pooped in a bag and he took it to California, put it in a blender, blended it up and put it down his dad's feeding tube. He says, David, it was instantaneous, like bam, he was like a different guy. He says it was incredible. He's like you just saw a wilted plant in the dirt, dirt over it, and this thing just pops up like a plant staring at the sun.

We went back home and he said he lived six or seven more months. He lived at home. He did die. He says too bad, I didn't get to it sooner. Then that was 2009, we haven't been open very long since 2010 probably and within about two years, I started seeing more and more on the internet. Now you can actually buy poop pills. I saw an advertisement on, I think, instagram one day hey, we'll pay you for your poop if it's good enough, right, yes, yes.

Ashley James (0:37:51.846)

So I interviewed Sarica Cernohous on my show many years ago. I've been doing this show for nine years, so this is probably like six, seven, eight years ago and Sarica is wonderful, she's still practicing. So she was down in Arizona I think Flagstaff and she was so sick, couldn't eat any food. You hear it time and time again, just have to do the elimination diet, then they can't eat anything, and she learned about how important the microbiome is. So she started to eat tiny, tiny, tiny doses, micro dosing, different live culture fermented foods and a variety. Variety is the key. You're talking, like less than a teaspoon at each meal sauerkraut, kimchi, whatever she made. You can ferment almost anything. I have an amazing salsa recipe in my book. Amazing salsa recipe little plug for my book. That's a three-day pico de gallo ferment and it is delicious. So she was fermenting everything.

David DeHaas (0:38:55.257)

Addicted to Wellness is the book. Where can I get the book, Ashley?

Ashley James (0:38:55.257)

They can go to learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness. That'll take them to the Amazon link where they can purchase it. And they could just go search Addicted to Wellness on Amazon.

David DeHaas (0:39:12.708)

Yes, keep going.

Ashley James (0:39:15.314)

So Sarica Cernohous, she rebuilt her gut microbiome and now her people are trying to pay her for her poop. She won't sell it. They're offering her thousands of dollars per bowel movement and I'm like she's making three bowel movements a day like she could just poop and be a millionaire and I don't know why she's not selling her poop because, in a way she's helping people. I can also see her standpoint because she's giving into the system, that's not actually helping people. What's really helping people is teaching them that they can do the same thing that she did. So now her gut microbiome is in the top 99 percentile for the most diverse gut microbiome and what we have the average American has the Homer Simpson of gut microbiomes. There's very little diversity and our gut microbiome is actually making us stupid. It is dumbing us down.

David DeHaas (0:40:20.466)

Ding, ding, ding ding. I've been saying that, preaching that, for the last couple of years. On the Talk Radio show we're on here, KIDO Talk Radio. You watch all the crazy liberals, republicans, all of them. I mean there's so much stupid being said everywhere and I've been saying it's our food, we got glyphosate that's killed our soils. We had Jim Zamzow on not too long ago talking about how we recover soils because they destroyed the microbiome. You see what's coming out of people's mouths. They can't think.

I remember we covered a gal speaking of that, to your point. She dropped out of college. She had a hard time studying. We meant to retain memory. We'd have to make notes for her Happiest gal ever. We'd make a nice list. She would do great work, smile, happy, glad to be here. She was going off. She's an LDS member and she was going to go on a mission. I told my wife, I said this gal is sick, not sick. We're not sending a letter to go away until we do a 10-day cleanse for her.

So I gave her a 10-day cleanse. I remember day eight, she had to speak at her church and she was really nervous. She hated this. She did not want to speak in front of it. She was so nervous. She came back. I said hey, how'd your speech go? She goes, it went amazing. She goes, David. People come up to me and they say, "Whoa, where'd you learn to speak like that? You're better than any of the missionaries. She goes, “David, I can think”. She cleaned out her body, got her colon, small intestine healed and started restoring, got that transverse colon that's where 90% of your serotonin gets made. She’s a different person, different person full time.

Ashley James (0:41:55.740)

I love it. I love it. Yes, so we can rebuild our gut, eat small amounts of fermented foods. I have a whole chapter in my book on rebuilding the gut

have you ship me some of your salsa and your ferment.

David DeHaas (0:42:08.143)

Have you ship me some of your salsa and your ferment. So are you shipping now?

Ashley James (0:42:12.750)

It's easier for you to make it in your own kitchen because you can regulate, like, how much of each, if you want it to be spicier or not. It's super easy to make. It's crazy easy. The hardest part about fermenting is mentally getting over the fact that you're leaving things out of the fridge. You're not hurting yourself. The salt slows down any bad microbes, but the good microbes thrive.

David DeHaas (0:42:43.835)

Do you get a little like a little yogurt maker and use that?

Ashley James (0:42:47.042)

Are you talking about the lactobacillus reuteri yogurt? Yes, so there's a type of instant pot that not all instant pot models. There's one instant pot model where you can manually adjust the temperature, because it has to be under 109, ideally between 100 and 108 Fahrenheit. So I set mine to about 203. I have a yogurt thermometer and I check the batch. Sometimes I have to, like, up the temperature, down the temperature. You don't want it to hit over 109 because then it kills the lactobacillus reuteri. You just want it to be over. If it's 100, good. If it's 107, good, so just that range.

It has to ferment for 36 hours. In the last hour of fermenting it, the population doubles. At 36 hours, don't stop at 35. You got to be 36. I actually find it's easier to do it because I do these really large batches, and then it lasts for several weeks for the whole family, and so it's yes, it's delicious. Then, as far as making the salsa, you put the contents in a mason jar, put like a mesh over the lid and leave it for three days and it is the most delicious thing you've ever tasted and it's full of wonderful gut microbes.

David DeHaas (0:44:11.564)

Yes, that's a big thing. We had a lady on our show. Clearwater Cultures met her in the show. She actually lives in Idaho County, where I grew up, and she makes soaps and different things. I went to her house where her little manufacturing facility is and she's got all these different big old pots fermenting, all these different things, a lot of different products you can buy from her.

We interviewed her way back. That's been a couple of years, three years ago, I think, Clearwater Cultures, shout out to her. It came to her, divine intervention that we need to keep our microbiome on our skin as well. We think about our gut. That's fascinating, and that's your book, Addicted to Wellness, get it at learntruehealth.com?

Ashley James (0:44:52.616)

Yes. Learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness. If they go to my website also, learntruehealth.com, they'll see a little link to go get the book?

David DeHaas (0:45:05.083)

They can buy it directly from you rather than giving money to Jeff.

Ashley James (0:45:10.220)

Actually it does. It directs straight to Amazon, because I publish through Amazon, which just makes it super easy for me and I like that we can use these days, like Amazon KDP, which is how you self-publish through Amazon. It makes it really easy to allow anyone to publish a book and then we get this information out there.

David DeHaas (0:45:35.564)

It's sad we've got all the information at our fingertips today. I mean we got so much. We have these smartphones, so much information. I mean I go to bed at night. I'm trying to keep my eyes open and my ears open. I fall asleep listening to podcasts and educational information. I'm just an information junkie, but it's just so sad where most people are unable to learn everything I've learned. I've self-learned throughout my life, learned throughout my life. Back in the day, before fax machines, you actually went to a library but no, it is what we've got.

Ashley James (0:46:11.468)

We have information overload. And the problem is knowing what direction; because, for example, one of the things I do is I show people how to reverse diabetes and no longer have insulin resistance so I can guide you to no longer have type 2 diabetes and within three to four months you will not be diabetic on your blood work. You'll feel like a million bucks. You'll feel amazing. But then it takes about a year to completely correct the insulin resistance so that you now have insulin sensitivity and you can eat whatever carbs you want. You can eat bananas all day long. You can eat potatoes all day long. Your blood sugar will be amazing. You'll feel like a million bucks.

You listen to my podcast. I will show you how to do that. Then you go listen to someone else's podcast who tells you to be a carnivore and eat nothing but meat. Do the meat diet. Poop once a week. Carnivore diet is where it's at.

The only way to reverse diabetes is to not eat carbs. So you get completely opposite information and the problem is that there's conflicting information for every single thing out there. So health is confusing. I believe there's also a concerted effort on the pharmaceutical front to confuse people because if we knew how to heal our bodies, we wouldn't need the most of the time

My biggest advice is to question everything, no matter how good someone sounds, no matter how good I sound. Question everything. Be the most open minded skeptic you can be. If it sounds weird don't throw it away. Listen to it.

I dive into the information, dive into the studies, and then find the doctor saying the opposite.

Dive into their studies. It's wonderful to really look and think for yourself and keep that open mind. It's OK to look at the opposing information, just like I wish Republicans looked at the Democratic information. Democrats looked at the Republican information with an open mind. We should all come together as humans wanting to build a better world, not just like. Well, I'm right, because my mom told me I should be a Democrat. It's just religion. People are buying into dogma without allowing themselves to learn.

So open your mind, take in new information and then be willing to try and experiment. I did over 30 diets, I experimented on my body and I noticed the result. I can tell you that carnivore diet looks really enchanting and it's so foul. I know a few people who now can only eat meat because of how they've eliminated everything and now they're stuck, they don't have the microbiome to handle themselves like they've got parasites and they're stuck and they don't know how to get out. The problem is, a lot of people get stuck in when you go down that rabbit hole of elimination and they don't know how to come out the other side and heal themselves. So best thing to do is to take in different sources of information and then be willing to experiment, write down your results and then try the different thing

So in my book I give challenges every week for 13 weeks. There are one to four challenges that you can try and then you write down and every day, morning and night, it still takes like five minutes in the morning, five minutes a night. You write down your results. It's guided questions. So there's 32, 33 health challenges. Each one builds a foundation of health and you try it and you experience it for yourself and you write down your results and you watch over seven days as your body transforms with that health challenge, and then you could choose to continue doing that health challenge or you could say, hey, this isn't for me, but each one it will transform you.

So my one, for example, is proper hydration, and everyone kind of just glazes over when you start talking about drinking water because it's free, because everyone thinks they are drinking enough water but most Americans are chronically dehydrated and most of the symptoms of chronic dehydration are being people are taking either over the counter drugs for or being prescribed drugs for.

So I give a hydration challenge and in that seven days every cell in your body will be fully hydrated. By the end of the seven days you will see miracles happen and one of them is, a 25% increase in cellular energy production. So if you go to stimulants, coffee, or sugar for energy at any point in your day, you likely are dehydrated. So do that one challenge in my book and notice that you will have a 25% increase in energy production.

David DeHaas (0:51:23.986)

I’m a little tired, my wife says to me, do you need some amino acids? Have some water. I go, my brain’s awake now okay, alright. Let’s go!

One of the things we do here, Ashley, we teach people how to muscle test. People call me. They always call me hey, Dave! Such and such is going on, says yes, and, remember, muscle test, yes, yes, that's power. I tell people the first day, you can walk away now and you can start figuring things out, if you embrace this.

I love having the book. You start out, Good morning. Today, I'm grateful for- you have gratitude. Gratitude is so important that our cleanse as well, and your goal intentions. So you have this journal, because what we all do is we forget I don't know.

Ashley James (0:52:21.774)

This is the page every morning during a challenge and every night during a challenge.

David DeHaas (0:52:25.575)

What choices did not serve me, what challenged me the most. Good choices I made. You rank yourself good, better, best, what you had for lunch and dinner. We forget, we get going and we forget and I love it. Change your thoughts, change your world and this is not an overwhelming book, folks. This is really nice. I love the font size.

Ashley James (0:52:48.309)

Yes, I made it so you don't have to put on your readers.

David DeHaas (0:52:50.846)

I love it, especially since I don't like straining my eyes, and it's very simple and you get into just going through week two, week three, week four, just a couple steps forward. If you miss a week, so what, just pick back up,

Ashley James (0:53:05.317)

Yes. Do it at your own pace.

David DeHaas (0:53:06.854)

Great explanation about high antioxidant foods. You did a really nice job of laying this book out. Other sweeteners, what's other choices you could use for sweeteners, cause we all like to have a little sweet taste.

Ashley James (0:53:21.668)

Yes, so every week we're choosing a different challenge, and you're talking about the week where we challenge ourselves to either go completely sugar-free or switch to healthier sweeteners as one of the four challenges in that week. Not every week is a physical thing, we have weeks that are about mental health, emotional health, in some cases, spiritual health. So there's physical health challenges, but then there's also mental, emotional health challenges as well.

David DeHaas (0:53:51.472)

Yes, and you've got back here at Restored Home Hydrotherapy. You've got power showers, the cold contrasting showers, so you got a little bit for everyone. I mean I would say to listeners, you probably won't do everything, some things resonate, some things won't, but, in this health journey we didn't come with a manual when we were born, unfortunately, we needed a manual.

This is a good way to start on that track and, of course, listen to podcasts, like what Ashley and I do is a great way to quickly and easily. I think back in the 90s if I would have had just a few of the podcasts were out there, I know I spent so much money. I probably spent 200 grand plus all the money I lost because I was sick.

Every Friday I would go away and go see my guru and go to the hot springs. Friday was just toast, non-productive, not to mention how tired I was. I remember how Huggins looked at me when I was doing my dentistry and he says I don't understand why you're even awake, David, your blood chemistry says you shouldn't be awake that.

Ashley James (0:54:53.345)

That was me too. That was me too. I had a holistic functional doctor in 2009 who did my cortisol levels.

They always spit in the tubes all day long and she had been to the Olympics twice and her and I are still friends. She's in her 80s and she runs marathons in the desert in Las Vegas. She's amazing, I love her. That is normal, right, being able to run marathons in the desert is normal in your 80s and that's what we all should be aiming for.

She looked at my cortisol levels and she said, your highest cortisol during the day is everyone else's cortisol when they're sleeping. The only time I've ever seen cortisol this low was right after I did the Olympics. She bounced back. That was my normal. She was one of my guides to help me get back on track and she actually gave up her medical license when she realized that being a doctor was a drug dealer. She wanted to be a functional doctor, so she decided to give up her license so that she could practice functional medicine.

David DeHaas (0:56:12.152)

They're addicted to the standard of care.

Ashley James (0:56:13.219)

Exactly. Her husband is a chiropractor and they run a clinic together and they're wonderful. Shout out to Dr. Jenny Ross Wilkinson. She's awesome. She showed me that my normal energy levels were everyone's energy levels when they were sleeping. I also couldn't process human language in the morning. I was so depleted, so exhausted. My husband talked to me and I actually couldn't understand what he was saying.

So that was right around the time that we were doing that challenge where we went organic, but it wasn't until I met Dr. Wallach and he showed me minerals, and then I woke up within five days of taking the essential nutrients my body was missing and also cutting out.

He has 12 foods that he had me remove which are the cause of stress to the body and also stop blocking proper digestion absorption. Then he got me on the right minerals, so just cleaned up how I was eating, guided me that way, and then everything came back online and that's when I decided to turn around.

This is about 2011. I turned around and said I want to do this as my career. I want to help people get better, and yes, so it's been wonderful. So before 2011, I was doing neuro linguistic programming and timeline therapy with people doing coaching, largely helping people to end chronic pain and also end anxiety. I have a technique where I turn off. I teach people how to turn off anxiety, completely, turn off anxiety by getting to the root cause in 90 seconds and then so for many years I was helping people on the emotional, mental level, but I didn't have the tools for physical. So that's the book. The book is everything that I learned, that it builds the foundations of your health, and done in a way that's so fun. No matter how busy you are, you can plug into this book five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, whatever you have, and you will be able to build your health as a result.

David DeHaas (0:58:22.883)

And you can't complete a journey if you don't start taking a step, guys, and you've only got one body, one time on earth, to make this journey. How well do you want to live?

Live your best life, and this is a great tool to put in your wellness toolbox, as we call it, is having a little guide here to guide you through this, with some great suggestions about hydration and everything. It’s very complete. This thing about keeping yourself accountable because we all forget we get busy, we get stressed. This thing about keeping yourself accountable because we all forget we get busy, we get stressed. Next thing you know, you're grabbing a soda or a beer and sucking down some glyphosate or whatever, because you get stressed.

Well, what if there was a tool? What if you had a tool in your toolbox you could pull out to counteract that? You're all going to mess up, but I did many, many times.

Ashley James (0:59:15.378)

Also because you track your symptoms in this book easily. It's a fun and easy way of doing it. You'll see your progress every month. We do a monthly check-in and you actually see your progress. I have had two clients on separate occasions both forget that they had chronic migraines because once I helped them get healthy again, they forgot. That's why they came to me in the first place and then I asked them both two different people on separate occasions. I said how, how are your migraines? They said what migraines? I got their migraines gone by them following the steps. So we forget sometimes.

David DeHaas (0:56:53.431)

I've interviewed people after 10 days and I said well, what did you experience? They go through all these things. I said wasn't there something else? Was there something else? This one gal I remember the reason why she came to me because she couldn't squeeze her hands. I say remember this. I'm squeezing my hands. She goes yes, I forgot about that one. That was really big.

Ashley James (1:00:13.995)

Wow! Can’t write, can’t drive, couldn't open doors, couldn't put on clothing, but then she forgot because it came back. This is what happened. The part of the book is like checking in and being like, for example, this water challenge really is working because, wow, now I'm pooping three times a day or now my headaches are gone or now my stiff joints are gone. Now I have more energy.

You look back, can you remember what you felt like seven days ago? No, can you remember when you ate two days ago? No, like we don't. We don't necessarily remember how we felt. So when we make health changes, a lot of times it's like throwing arrows in the dark and we forget to keep doing the healthy thing. Keep doing the new habit, because we forget how good it made us feel and how it's helping our body be healthy. So that's why the book is so important to help you track that, so you can check back and go, Oh, I really should keep doing this new health habit, because it is making such a profound difference.

David DeHaas (1:01:17.248)

Yes, it's awesome. Addicted to Wellness. The healthy addiction 12-week workbook for creating a lifelong love of wellbeing. Guys, once you go two or three steps forward, half a step back, no big deal, just keep trudging forward.

Have yourself a way to kind of keep yourself accountable. Learn something new every day and let's get those bodies detoxed and back to wellness. Ashley, thanks for being on the show. Is there anything you want to add?

Ashley James (1:01:40.848)

Oh, I love being here. I also think listeners should check out the interview that you had on my show, which was amazing and I loved it. So listeners can go to learntruehealth.com, use the search function, anything you want to search. I think I just published 520. So, yes, we've got lots of interviews with amazing experts.

David DeHaas (1:02:03.587)

I’ve around 200 something

Ashley James (1:02:06.924)

Well, just keep going, just keep chugging along. I had a mentor who when I started had over a thousand. So I was like, oh, thousands, a good number to aim for. I'm halfway there.

David DeHaas (1:02:21.078)

I couldn't believe how many I've done. It seems like yesterday I started, now, each week it's always a scramble. I don't interview everybody every week like you do. I go solo a lot, so it's always coming up. I've heard myself speak and say this stuff over and over and over and over. So you're sitting here alone in the studio talking to yourself, always trying to keep something fresh and new and always staying up on it. A lot of good episodes over there, for sure.

Ashley James (1:02:47.904)

I think, since you have clients in your clinic, even if they could come up with questions for you to answer, that would be great content. They could give you questions and then you could answer it in the podcast or you could even have them interview you and pick your brain, live. That would be cool. They don't necessarily have to be on video if they don't want to, they could be on the other side of the camera asking you questions and then you basically go live in a little classroom because everyone would be different. Then you don't have to preplan.

I know I would be curious to hear, like, how you answer things if it's coming from a client who's sitting there. The best interviewer is someone who's genuinely curious, and that has been my gift, apart from God's divine guidance, when I interview people, I'm just genuinely interested because I was sick and suffering and I got that my health got better, and I'm always looking to learn and help myself.

The purpose of my show, as is the purpose of your show, is to reach as many people as possible and to help them learn what it is to achieve true health, and that's why I named my podcast Learn True Health, because it is about this journey of learning what it is to achieve true health and how to get there and how to build your true health, and that's mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically.

As a fun side note, I had a client who says he was born with the gift of seeing angels and guides and he's Catholic and he says he would be in church and he would see angels in the church. I think it's phenomenal and he has some amazing information. We were actually I did a live interview with him and I was in his office, and when I hit record, he goes like you were just surrounded by angels guiding you.

He goes like all of a sudden they just came and I was like you know what so many times people compliment me and being a good interview, I don't even think like I'm there. I feel like I'm just a listener of my own show and I'm a fan of my own show, but when I'm sitting there interviewing, I feel like I'm being guided when it comes to asking questions. So the questions pull out the information, and the information is what we're here for, right. So you're a great interviewer and a great guest and it was wonderful having you on my show and it was wonderful being on your show, so thank you.

David DeHaas (1:05:22.714)

Yes, thank you as well. So, yes, I always just say a prayer. Give me the right words. That's my prayer. Give me the right words I need to say, and then I just go.

I love it pretty well, I do. I love making notes, I do. Now I've started scripting more things. you'll be, I'll be laying there at night and things will pop to my head go, oh, that'd be a great one, that's some great questions, then y'all remember that one and of course, no, don't remember you will not remember it, I've got better speaking the phone like no, and we got it.

Ashley James (1:05:54.414)

I don't actually prepare ahead of time for my interviews because when I'm scripted or when I have a bunch of questions written down, I'm too much in my head, I get discombobulated. When I'm present in the moment with a guest, I'm just super curious. I just want to pull the information out of them. I want us to extract and learn as much as we can from that person, so I'm way more present to them. Then the questions come to me and so many times my listeners say that was you just asked the question that I was on my mind. You said exactly my question. I can't tell you how many times people have said that to me. That's where divine guidance comes in which is really exciting.

David DeHaas (1:06:34.356)

I just did an interview not too long ago and I read the book and I read everything and I wrote down all kinds of questions and then, of course, I got an interview and then the questions were there and we just started rolling.

I got done. I looked down and went, oh, I hit them all. I didn't even look at them. Well, what a pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank you so much. Ashley James, Addicted to Wellness. Get it at learntruehealth.com for a slice of Addicted Wellness, or go to Amazon and put in the search terms. Get the book and start your journey towards wellness. Until next week, my friends have a blessed week.

Outro:

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