Who does your doctor go to when they can’t figure something out about the body?

Do you know?

I do, and we’re chatting with her today on this delicious episode discussing the food frame method, menopause, weight loss, and autoimmune disease.

***She is also generously giving this audience 10% OFF her 14-day RGN detox for anyone ages 15 and up who wants to detox the liver, purify the body, and reset eating habits. 

Click this link & use code FYS10 at checkout to receive this exclusive offer, which will be active for the next 90 days.***

Before we dive in, thank you for having the bravery to face your shit and heal yourself by listening to this show.  

Because We are talking about truth, freedom & real shit on this show, its exposure & reach are being censored, so thank you also for having the bravery to like (Apple), share (Spotify) & subscribe (Youtube) to my channel to help this information reach the people who need to hear it.

Facing Your Shit & Healing Yourself is more than just this podcast, it is a movement.

Join the #FYSHY movement with a one-off donation or become a member for as low as $5/month & receive exclusive art, be featured on the show, submit questions for guests, and more.

So who am I and why did I decide to create this show? Well, after unraveling all of the medical & pharmaceutical lies I had been told about my endometriosis, I educated myself, and I was able to heal myself after 17 years of debilitating pain.

My experience inspired me to actually live my art, so I created an ongoing art series about it called, Every Phase––where I create artwork that illustrates how I healed myself as I live by the phases of the female hormonal cycle.  The artwork shows what's happening in the brain and the body during each phase and reveals how to biohack & leverage this energy in your life. 

I am actually living the art, so it's about more than just healing. The writing and art discuss truth, freedom & our current financial & healthcare system slavery–and the way out.  Learn more by subscribing at meredithochoa.com

While you’re there, check out my $50 Limited Edition Bite Size Art Acrylic Block pieces capturing all of the images from the Every Phase Series + be sure to pick up a signed copy of my award-winning augmented Reality (AR) interactive book, Face Your Shit, Heal Yourself.

So all of that to say, even though I was lied to for years by big pharma, I was able to find experts who helped me achieve the impossible. This space introduces them to you.

Today we are chatting with Functional Nutritionist and Certified Autoimmune Coach, Risa Groux.

RISA runs a private practice in Newport Beach, California, and her work has been featured on platforms like Good Morning America, CBS, and Good Day LA, just to name a few. She has always been passionate about nutrition and good health, and was so concerned about purity that she made her children’s baby food from scratch. Today she is passionate about cooking and creating healthy, nutritious food. She works with a wide array of clients from professional athletes, adults, and kids to the Biggest Loser from season four. Risa works with issues like diabetes, autoimmune disease, cancer, digestion, thyroid, and hormone imbalances, and more. Risa firmly believes that the body can heal itself with whole foods we obtain from the earth and sees living proof of that in her office each day. She looks at root causes using functional nutrition guidelines, blood and stool tests, and knows that weight loss is a side effect of wellness.

Connect with & learn more about Risa...

Risa's Website @risagrouxnutrition on Instagram Risa's Facebook page

✅CHAPTERS

00:00:00 Intro

#1 00:06:21 Facing Shit : Perpetual Diets for women

#2 00:11:02 Menopause, Autoimmune, Hashimoto's & Epstein Barr

#3 00:16:06 Liver Detox for Peri/Menopause

#4 00:19:43 Food Frame Method for weight loss

#5 00:28:36 When your Dr. can't, they call her

#6 00:37:47 Changing the broken system

#7 00:41:16 Infertility - additives, toxins & chemicals

#8 00:45:48 Biohacking with Art - sand art

If you liked the episode or you think it would be useful for someone else, please leave a review on Apple, Spotify, Youtube, or (especially) podchaser

If there is a woman you know who is struggling with period pain, the foundation of how I healed myself began with reading Womancode & In The Flo by Alisa Vitti.

You can also pick up a signed copy of my printed book with a list of resources and doctors that helped me, and remember, as always...

The truth will set you free.

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That is like my biggest megaphone I've got is if we could just decrease our chemicals, we wouldn't have to worry as much, but things like Goldfish, and Cheez Its, which I find in every airport, in every line, at every checkout, in every store, whether it's the hardware store, the office store, or the supermarket, we have it everywhere.

They've got things in there like TBHQ, and all these terrible preservatives that are killing our fertility. Just crushing our fertility. So we're going to see a really big problem in the years to come with fertility, male and female, because of all these endocrine disrupting preservatives, our food additive industry is over 4 billion dollars additives.

And she is generously giving this audience 10 percent off her 14 day RGN detox for anyone ages 15 and up who wants to detox the liver, purify the body, and reset their eating habits. Check out the link below in the show notes. Use code FYS10, FYS10, which will be active for the next 90 daysTo receive this exclusive offer and detox your body.

Before we dive in though, I sincerely want to thank you for having the bravery to face your shit and heal yourself by listening to this show.

Because we're talking about very real shit on this show, its exposure and its reach are being limited and censored. So thank you also for liking on Apple, sharing it on Spotify, and subscribing on YouTube, or all three of those. To my channel to help this information reach the people who really need to hear it.

Facing Your Shit and Healing Yourself is more than just this podcast. It is a movement. You can join this movement with a one off donation or become a member for as low as 5 a month where you will receive exclusive artwork, be featured on the show, submit questions for guests, and more. So who am I and why did I decide to create this show?

Well, after unraveling all of the medical and pharmaceutical lies I had been told about my endometriosis I educated myself and I was able to heal myself after 17 years of debilitating pain My experience inspired me to actually live my art So I created an ongoing art series about it called every phase Where I create artwork that illustrates how I healed myself as I live by the cycles of the phase Female hormonal clock artwork shows what's happening in the brain as well as in the body during each phase and reveals how to biohack and leverage this energy in your life.

I am actually living the art. So it is about way more than just healing the writing and the artwork discuss truth, freedom, our current financial and healthcare system, slavery, as well as the way out of it. You can learn more and be the first to get the first art pieces released each month by subscribing at MeredithOchoa.

com. So all that to say, even though I was lied to for years by doctors promoting big pharma, I was able to find experts who helped me achieve what I thought was impossible. This show introduces those people and practices to you. Today we are chatting with functional nutritionist and certified autoimmune coach, Risa Gru.

Risa runs a private practice in Newport Beach, California, and her work has been featured on platforms like Good Morning America, CBS, and Good Day LA, just to name a few. She has always been passionate about nutrition and good health, and was so concerned about purity that she made her children's baby food from scratch.

Today, she is passionate about cooking and creating healthy, nutritious food. She works with a wide array of clients from professional athletes, adults, and kids to the biggest loser from season four. Risa works with issues like diabetes, auto immune disease, cancer, digestion, thyroid, and hormone imbalances.

And more Risa firmly believes that the body can heal itself. With whole foods we obtained from the earth and sees living proof of that in her office each day, she looks at root causes using functional nutrition guidelines, blood and stool tests, and knows that weight loss is a side effect of wellness.

and that's why I feel like you're seeing this little bit, it's slow. I'd rather it be faster and everyone just realize all the lies they've been told about food and health. But I feel like that's why we're seeing this.like boundary and just like people, I feel like even though they're not necessarily all the way educated, they're just tired of feeling like crap all the time and being gaslit by the doctor who just goes, well, we don't see anything on your test.

You should be taking some testosterone. But anyway, he's no, not yet.

[00:06:14] Risa: It's definitely something else. Yeah. Anyway, it's your paradigm is broken.

[00:06:21] Meredith: It's totally broken. And I know with your incredible work, but I'd love to know that moment or that catalyst, what motivated you to really face your own shit, leading you to, all the incredible work you do today.

I later found out it was a spa that go with my aunt, for a week. And, you know, it just, this relationship with food with women, particularly in my family, was just really bad. So I was always interested in nutrition and why we eat certain things, because she would say all these bad foods, I always thought tasted pretty good to me.

So it just was a lot of food confusion. And so I was always interested in food and weight loss and how that happens. And then, I was, of course followed suit in my family and in high school, I just was perpetually trying the newest diet, right? Whatever diet book came out, I was on it and I would eat grapefruit for, two weeks and I would just, and then I would just, pig out with my girlfriends and eat cookies and ice cream.

And it just, it was just this horrible relationship with food. Right? And I would tell myself all these things about myself. looking at my body, how much my weight was. And it just was, it was, I was sick and tired of that conversation. And then when I got married, we got pregnant immediately without really even trying, we just got pregnant right on our honeymoon.

And, and then that was like, not an issue for me, but when we tried for our second child, that's when I was faced with some reality, I just couldn't get pregnant. And if I did get pregnant, I would have a miscarriage. So I finally went to a fertility specialist after a couple of years of that, and he did all these blood tests, and he basically, passed the script over to the other side of the desk and said, here, you got to take this.

You've got an underachieving thyroid. And I'm like, well, how long do I take this for? And he said, every day. And I said, well, for how long? And he said, for the rest of your life. And then I walked out of that office and I had two major burning questions. A, why is my thyroid not producing the hormone that I was actually born to produce?

And B, why is he not wondering why it's not working? And why is he giving me this medication, a synthetic medication to mimic this hormone that I'm supposed to be making? Okay. It didn't seem like he was alarmed at all and I was very alarmed and then, I started looking into that. I took the pills for a while and then I stopped and then I, realized that I had this gene mutation that's super common.

Most people have called MTHR and I took a B vitamin and I did some acupuncture. Next thing you know, I got pregnant at a great pregnancy. Everything was great. Bye. And about a year or so after that, I wasn't quite feeling myself. And I went to a naturopathic doctor and that's when they found Hashimoto's.

Now, was I tested for Hashimoto's way back when I don't know, it can usually happen after a big hormonal change like pregnancy. So it could have been that I had Hashimoto's way back when, but they never tested me. I don't know. But at that point I was like, whoa, let's put the brakes on here. Something, this train is going off the rails.

Let's figure out what's happening. And that's really when I did a deep dive. I was starting to go through nutrition back to school for nutrition shortly thereafter. And I really did a deep dive into autoimmune diseases and I became a clinical nutritionist and then I found functional medicine and, was trained in functional medicine.

And so I'm always looking for the root cause and I've been fortunate enough to be able to reverse my Hashimoto's and, and I feel great.

Like I'm going to, but you having, to investigate that on your own is really the way that you found. Any kind of answer, which is really an average

[00:11:02] Risa: person. The average person goes to six practitioners, six doctors before they're actually diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.

And I feel like autoimmune is really just Kind of Western medicine's way of saying, we don't really know what it is, so we're going to say it's autoimmune,

as we, as the years pass, because we have so much more chemicals, we have so much more leaky gut, a 3rd of its genetics. But then we have all these other things like viruses and pathogens that we don't even look for, right? Doctors don't test for viruses or pathogens unless you come in and don't feel well.

But let's say you have an active Epstein Barr virus, which really has no major symptoms for most adults. You could be having this, it can cause up to 33 autoimmune diseases.

Which, especially for women, which you were touching on, there's just no education out there saying, we are not on the same hormonal cycle as men. We do not live the nine to five everyday linear hormonal clock. It is a long circuit battery compared to the short circuit, right?

Oh, for sure. And every day is different.

[00:12:44] Meredith: Yeah. So menopause, perimenopause, autoimmune diseases. Let's talk about it.

So you've obviously you've healed yourself, reversing Hashimoto's, alleviated menopause symptoms through food, through diet, through lifestyle, and you've helped so many other people do the same thing. Can you share about your unique approach identifying those root causes? Thank you.

There was just no list anywhere that I could look at, like, why is this happening? Let me go down the checklist. But I created my own and of course I went through every single thing and I had every single thing. So it took me a long time, mercury poisoning and I had Epstein Barr virus. I had all these things.

I had some gut stuff going and I went through every single one of those root causes. And it took a while to reverse them, but I did so, in that process of anybody who has antibodies, it's a little bit different, right? But you're going to basically have at least 1 thing on that list. So I'm going to give them more vitamin D.

So they have optimal levels. I'm going to make sure that they're being treated for an empty HFR gene mutation. any kind of virus. I don't do a whole viral panel, but I'm looking at viruses, but I can look to see what their blood with their white blood cells look like because I'm looking for a viral pattern or bacterial pattern.

And so then I'll test according to that. if they have, in the gut, I'm usually seeing a lot of bacteria overgrowth or a particular bacteria. And the stool test that I use, there's a whole section of, of autoimmune bacterias that can cause autoimmune disease. So if somebody has them at high levels, it's usually a culprit for that particular autoimmune disease.

So it's easier for autoimmune because I have pretty much a checklist now with hormones. It's a little bit different because every woman is different, but you know, some women will have symptoms. Some women won't. but I don't guess I test and so I do a whole panel on their blood work to see. Well, I do it on their hormones specifically, but everything I usually do a whole panel anyway on everything because I'm always looking, but specifically on their hormones, I'm looking to see where their imbalances and I'm looking at their diet.

Are they getting excess estrogen from soy? Are they getting it from BPA in plastic bottles? Are they using autonoplastic? Are they heating plastic in the microwave? Are they using shampoos with parabens? Parabens mimic, has have isoflavones that mimic estrogen. So we get estrogens from various sources.

So that's why it's so fragile because we are always, we're so at risk to being imbalanced, because we're so affected by all these other things, other factors that can increase or decrease our estrogens and our testosterones. So, if a woman has PCOS or they maybe have higher testosterone.

Without PCOS, I'm gonna look at all of those. Where do we start with and then what are your symptoms? So I'm always trying to help people balance, if they're dry or if they don't sleep or if they have brain fog all of these things are consideration to balancing out hormones.

[00:16:06] Meredith: Yeah, and we're just so bombarded like you were saying it's just you just don't people don't even realize it's the freaking candles It's the freaking, what we were talking about, the Glade plugins! It's you just getting fumed, you're getting it in your mouth, you're getting it on your skin, it's everywhere, in your hair, It's everywhere.

Would you say, and I know everyone's so different as we just discussed and you're such a big believer and you need to start where you're at, like your current health status, you need to eat for that and treat your body for like where you're at. But would, what would you say? most commonly, if you could say anything, was most beneficial for helping people with those menopausal symptoms that are really suffering.

So it's really important to make sure that the liver is being, is working optimally, for hormones, especially. I cannot tell you how many people I put on my detox. It's a two week detox. You're eating, it's not a starvation program, but you're cleaning out your liver. How many women will say to me, Hey, my skin is better.

right? Because we balanced up the hormones and be, they will tell me their periods are like they don't have PMS anymore. So it is, there's a major impact for, tons of things, night sweats and hot flashes. So it's, it really affects all hormonal functions when you clean out the liver, because it is really the key to the castle.

So that I would say is probably the number one thing. I would recommend for people to do, for women to do in that perimenopausal state or menopausal state is just continue to clean out that liver.

things that impact the liver. Exactly. By

They can, the gate opens, it goes through, right? Those are foods that we're born to eat, like animal protein and protein, fat, and fiber. Yeah. Yeah. And then we have the chemicals, right? The chemicals that we weren't born to eat. These are the foreign objects. These have to go into the visitor lane. They have to wait and get a pass, they get their information, they have to show their driver's license, they have to go through this whole thing, make sure they're called in.

Basically, the liver has to convert itself, these phthalates or parabens or whatever they are, into enzymes that the body can recognize so that they can get digested through the system, right?

[00:19:14] Risa: Processing. So how many times, if you keep, how long is your visitor line? Do you have tons and tons of cars that are waiting to, for that conversion, waiting for that pass to get let through?

And if you have a big backup there and the liver is just exhausted, that, You've got to have a changing of the guards really, right? You've got to have somebody else who's going to come in and help the rest of the line because you can keep going all day and all night. It's exhausting. So if you've got to put out your liver, you should.

Right?

[00:19:43] Meredith: Yeah. I love that picture you painted. Especially as an artist, I totally relate to that. It's so true. And I know you've said too, weight loss. Is a side effect of wellness and wellness has to do with your hormones has to do with your whole body mind, body, spirit. I'd love to dive into a little bit more about your food frame method and the six.

I believe it's different kind of eating types. Tell us how that works.

Well, I started to notice that some people were like doing great on this anti inflammatory diet, while other people were like, I am bloated. I can't sleep. I'm like, you're eating like such good food. And I realized. That they cannot eat certain foods, even though they're good for you foods, they're anti inflammatory foods, they just can't process them.

For whatever reason, whether they have SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, whether they have mold, or whatever it is that they have, right? Or maybe they have high blood sugars and they shouldn't be eating yams or sweet potato. And I realized, through the food allergy testing, I'm like, some of these people have tons and tons of food allergies.

And I thought, I'm giving them a test back going. Okay, well, you can drink water. You're good with water. And so I realized that it wasn't the food allergies that they were born with, right? This is not a thing that they were born with. I realized that it was actually the. the leaky gut that was causing these food sensitivities because these proteins were going through these gaping holes in the intestinal lining.

And so it was a side effect, is the, this is the consequence of a leaky gut. It really wasn't the problem. So When I realized that everybody can't eat the same way, I started to develop food frame and I slowly realized that everybody really optimized their health by eating according to their current health status.

So what I basically mean is that if you have blood sugar dysregulation, right? Or maybe you can have cancer and sugar is not good for cancer. You're going to be somebody I would recommend doing a keto program, right? Of course, that is if you have your gallbladder and you can digest your fats, which I find out through my stool test that I do.

So if you qualify, you're absolutely, I'm going to put you on a keto program because that is going to help stabilize your blood sugars and. decrease your, not feed your cancers, right? It will help not proliferate your cancer. If you have SIBO, we'll start with that one because, small intestinal bacteria overgrowth is this bacteria that parks itself in the small intestines rather than the large intestines.

And there are certain foods that are healthy, anti inflammatory. like onions or garlic. those are awesome. Really good prebiotics. But prebiotics is like the, about the worst thing you can give somebody with SIBO So they should not be eating those kinds of foods. So I'm going to put them on my low FODMAP.

And FODMAP is an acronym for fermented oleosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyol. So in English, these are carbohydrates that will absorb the water or create gases, depending on what type of SIBO you have to make you bloated, chronically bloated, which usually is paired with chronic diarrhea or chronic constipation or alternating of both.

So I wouldn't want to do that for somebody. So, so a low FODMAP program is what I'm going to put anybody with SIBO or. IBS or IBD, irritable bowel syndrome or disease, right? That if you've got major inflammation in your gut lining, which I'm going to find out through my stool test I'm going to put you on lofodmab.

Now if you've got any antibodies, right, you come in and you say, okay I've got these antibodies to rheumatoid. I've got a rheumatoid factor. I've got rheumatoid antibodies I've got all these antibodies. It could be thyroid. It could be fibromyalgia. It could be Anything. Sjogren's. I'm going to put you on lofodmab A.

I. P. Protocol, which is the autoimmune protocol, and that is very much like paleo, but it's very restrictive. So that is like a real fire hose to help dampen that inflammation that we know is chronically going on your th 17 is activated your kind of cytokine storm is raging because you have antibodies, right?

And these antibodies have found a place to park itself, a gland, a tissue, or an organ to attack because you've had antibodies for quite some time and it needs to find a place to park. So I'm absolutely going to put you on the AIP protocol. And after that, I may choose lelectin for you, which is very similar.

or a regular paleo program and then I have paleo, which I think is really the more the maintenance program for pretty much everybody. And it really is the 1 that's anti inflammatory that most people thrive on that's the way I eat at this point. But I've done this flow FODMAP. I've done, AIP when I had my antibodies as well.

And then there's vegetarian, there's people who culturally or morally are really committed to being vegetarian and absolutely. I break down all the different ways you can be vegetarian and, you can be vegetarian eating French fries and Oreos, but that's not exactly what I think helps us.

So, I define that. And in each. chapter of each food frame or eating lifestyles. I say who is best suited and who's probably not best suited for that. And then I give really very detailed descriptions of which one, what you can eat, what you cannot eat and and how long they are. So like low FODMAP is a 30, 30 day protocol, 30 to 90 days.

AIP, same thing, 30 to 90 days. I usually recommend people go 90 days for both. Okay. but that is, they're just a little bit more like an elimination diet or eating lifestyle.and then you do more of a maintenance after that.

So exactly. Is it like essentially, You are healing the gut in tandem. So it is like a custom leaky gut repair in addition to, and then you go on the maintenance.

They will not be hurting. your gut, and going that way, but you're definitely moving forward for sure. Now, could you heal a leaky gut depending on, how bad it is? Sure. You could do it just through food, but I think there are certain amino acids like, glutamine, glutamine, that's really important to help heal a gut, which we can find in collagen and in bone broth and things like that.

but you know, somebody with a low FODMAP program, they're not really well suited for a because there's a lot of prebiotics and fiber. So fiber is really what's very helpful to help heal a leaky gut. So while it will definitely be helping to heal the leaky gut, I don't, I wouldn't say affirmatively that it's going to reverse all leaky gut situations.

He was telling me, yeah, it's only one cell thick, the lining. So with the modern diet,Coke, alcohol, some fried food, some hot wings, there you go. Then you have, there's Alzheimer's and then there's, dementia and then there's, endometriosis and then it's like a wild.

The vast array.

It could be anything, right? so it's all driven by inflammation. Absolutely. And yes, we only have one layer of epithelial cells protecting us. We have seven on the outside of our skin. So it's really fragile. So all it takes is a good big bag of Doritos and you can be there, right?

[00:28:36] Meredith: It's crazy. So crazy.

And I remember also in some of the stories when we chatted a little bit earlier, you have been the one doctors seek help from when they can't figure it out, whether for themselves Whether for, their patients and, I laugh because we're discussing all this. I'm sure you've heard from people, working with you or otherwise the classic, well, I need to verify this and ask my doctor, right?

Which I can imagine would be very frustrating because most Western medicine doctors just aren't educated in nutrition. It's actually not even a part of the educational protocol. So I would love to ask, what do you wish more people understood about? The healthcare industry and about health, about what you do in general.

Wow. I don't think we have enough time for that,

Okay. Is, crisis management system is really, not set up for success. We have a monetary gain from sickness and the sicker you are, the more money the industry makes, And these are public companies and, look at the pharmaceutical stock prices, right? They have just been soaring and soaring.

And it's because they keep coming out with drugs or medication to do for an ill right? We have a pill for an ill paradigm and that's, it's worse than it's ever been. if you turn on regular TV and you look at the ads, it's shocking, right?

[00:30:26] Risa: What And it, our food is really broken, right?

We're subsidizing farmers to make more soy and more corn and more wheat. And these are foods that are not helping us. They're hurting us and they're in all processed foods. And so it's helping destroy us and they're being subsidized. The little farmers who are trying to grow healthy quality product that we've always had for.

Since, the inception of earth, they are, they have all these legal challenges because basically these big corporations have taken ownership of their seeds and they can't use their great grandfather seeds that they've been using, they have to use theirs and they have chemicals in their seeds.

We cannot get the nutrients, the. the micronutrients, the minerals and the vitamins in our foods because our soils, I've done a lot of research here and I've been to a lot of farms and you can see The soil from an organic farm versus a conventional farm, even if they're right next to each other, they look completely different.

I once went to this corn crop and I said, Oh, this is dead. And they said,no, it's not dead. It's GMO corn, conventional corn. And I, there's nothing green about it. I said, it's gotta be dead. And they're showing me, no, it's not dead. But if you go to an organic farm where they're growing corn, it's, it looks completely different.

It looks like a live, growing, healthy crop. So that's really where our soils are really, I think, at the very beginning of the problem. And if we just fixed our soils, everything would really fix itself. But that's not the case because it's, the chemicals in the soils are big business. And so that's a major part of what's broken.

And the other part of our system that's broken is our medical schools. Are really being predicated by the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies and, so they're not teaching nutrition. It's a complete elective. I go to conferences a lot and I was at 1 conference meeting. Maybe there was 100 people in the room and the doctor was making a presentation said, pretty much everybody in there was a doctor, probably except for maybe me and a couple other people.

But they said, how many of you took. nutrition classes in medical school, and I think five people raised their hand, and they don't understand. And I have friends who are doctors, and they don't, they were not taught that the body can heal from foods. They were taught chemistry, that if you put this chemical in the body, it's going to react this way, and it can quell this particular symptom.

But then we have all the side effects. So I always say, you go to the doctor with one hole at the top of the boat and they patch that hole. But then you realize there's three holes in the back of the boat that just popped up. So you run to the back of the boat and you go to poke those three holes.

there's three holes. holes and then five more popped up in the front of the boat and people come to see me and they've got so many holes in the boat. It's hard to address each one of them because there's so many things that are going on and so many deficiencies. It takes a really long time. look at PPIs, proton pump inhibitors, right?

Like Nexium and Prilosec And, omeprazole, right? You look at the side of the box and it's intended for 14 days. People come into my office and I've had people say, I have no idea how long it's been, absolutely longer than 25 years that I've been taking it. There is no end to that. And now we know that long-term usage of PPIs increased our chances for Alzheimer's by 40%.

Wow. A lot of anti-me antide, depression medications, same thing. So, but we hand them out like they're candy and now we have this GLP 1s, so it's like the perfect diet pill, right? So they think and I was giving a talk in front of Doctors, I don't know maybe about a year or so ago when the craze was going on It was a little more than a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago, and they were asking me What are your, what's your experience with GLP 1s and what do you think?

And I'm thinking they're asking me this

[00:34:58] Risa: they're not getting all that much information. So our system is broken. I don't,if we could change the medical schools to start with, that would be great. And then, I was working with a surgeon as a patient, and, a few years ago and we were talking about his food and he, I said, well, what's for lunch?

And he's in surgery most of the day, but he's, he wins. So I said, well, what's for lunch? And he said, well, you're not gonna like this, but the pharmaceutical company brings lunch for my entire staff of a hundred people. every single day. So I'm like, you're going to have to bring your own lunch, right?

Because the places that they're. delivering from is not the places that are healthy, right? Soit's this bad paradigm that we have in that insurance companies don't want to approve anything, but if they were to just look at prevention,

[00:35:51] Risa: we don't have to treat you when you're, when you get to that state, cause you won't get there, but if we can treat you and look at insulin, for instance, insulin is a great example.

When you become insulin resistant, It could take up to 11 years, but it's a precursor to prediabetes. But we don't even test for that. Doctors don't even know what those markers are. I test everybody for it. Right. But you know, I just gave the news to somebody this morning, you full on prediabetes and you have full on insulin resistance and you've probably been insulin resistant for a while.

But had I met you a year ago, six months ago, three years ago, we probably would have been able to reverse the insulin resistance and been able to have prevented this prediabetes from appearing. Right. So it's broken in so many. different areas and we just have to be our own advocate for our health and, and question.

And when you get your blood test and your doctor's reviewing it, you have all these red marks on it and they, and you say, what's that? And they say, you're fine. You should know, you should be able to read your blood work or go to somebody like me. Who will teach you who go through and I take an hour to read, review your blood work.

You need to know, you need to know how your thyroid works. You need to know all four markers of your blood sugar. You need to know what your iron levels are. You need to know what your inflammation markers are. No doctor, no conventional doctor I've ever seen will test you for inflammation markers.

[00:37:46] Meredith: Yeah.

[00:37:47] Risa: Right? But we do crisis management. We already wait until you're fully diagnosed and in disease state. And then we have a pill for that. And if the pill doesn't work, we give you another one. If that doesn't work, we start taking body parts out.

And it's so in your face now. And I think it's the more in your face, it becomes like you said, the louder people are going to get, and people need to get mad because the reason it is this way today is because no one got mad enough, no one, everyone in the name of being politically correct or wanting to make a buck or not wanting to ruffle feathers.

Just became complacent and now we're all dying and we all have autism and we all you know Can't lose weight and we all have these crazy autoimmune disorders It's wild and I think people it just starts like with what you said education even in the chemical conversation even understanding like things like depression emotional Issues are linked to your gut.

They're linked to your body. They're linked to what you're putting in your mouth. Not just your traumatic experiences you had. Of course, those all play a role. But if people realize okay, the B 12 that I'm taking is literally I remember learning about the cyanocobalamin. I'm probably not pronouncing it right, how it's literally, it's just like recycled poop!

they're recycling poop and selling it to us and putting it in B12, and that's like the prefix, the cyano, and those are the cheaper vitamins at Kroger. I'm like, it's disgusting, to be honest with you.

This is just not okay that all of us are guinea pigs, right? And we are a fat and sick nation. And people don't know this, but even our blood labs,if I were younger, I would absolutely be taking on this industry if I had time, because it's so backwards. The lab ranges reassess their ranges quarterly.

Right. Every single lab in the country, and they are predicating everything on what comes into their particular lab. And so what the, these reference ranges are really for normal ranges and normal as being a obese and sick nation. This is not normal. This is not optimal, right? We want optimal health.

We don't want normal health, right? Because that is skewed. And so we have to look at a smaller range so that we can prevent things. And as I said, it's set up so that they won't treat you until you're in a diseased state, right? And then the other thing that is really important is that now they just, Approve 12 year olds.

To have GLP 1s. Don't bother changing your diet and eating real food and exercising because we want Coke and Oreos or whoever to continue to get their profits. Just take this pill, right? That's a fortune, right? That may make your family bankrupt, but just take this pill. You can eat whatever you want.

It's, we just,it's such a bad paradigm that we have, that we all have to be advocates. We all have to be educated. We all have to listen to podcasts like this so we understand what we should be looking for.

[00:41:16] Meredith: Yeah, absolutely. And again, like you said, we can have a whole freaking episode on it. the whole show really is about demystifying all of these, health, issues.

Myths and, elevating voices like yours that honestly helped me achieve what I've been told was impossible. it's impossible to reverse chronic disease. It's impossible to heal from endometriosis. It's just completely false. Possible to reverse Hashimoto's, all of these other things. So, while we're on the conversation of medical marketing, if you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, Getting a message out to billions or millions of people, what would it say and why?

That's a great question.

It just keeps getting done. That is like my biggest megaphone I've got is if we could just decrease our chemicals, we wouldn't have to worry as much, but things like goldfish. And Cheez Its, which I find in every airport, in every line, at every checkout, in every store, whether it's the hardware store, the home, the office store, or the, the supermarket, we have it everywhere.

They've got things in there like TBHQ, and think, all these terrible preservatives that are killing our fertility. Just crushing our fertility. So we're going to see a really big problem in the years to come with fertility, male and female, because of all these endocrine disrupting preservatives, our food additive industry is over 4 billion dollars additives.

I don't, and I don't need it. Right. So I don't know. I heard something recently that we each have 22 pounds of additives a year. Okay. And I'm not having 22 pounds. So somebody else's having my 22. So, imagine that it's just insanity to me and I really would love to see people get back in the kitchen and cook.

I would love, I taught both of my kids, my daughter and my son to cook and they do, they meal prep every single week for their office to go to work. And when they come home, they even feed their dog. My daughter feeds her dog pristinely because we should be eating real food. Right. And, cooking is a survival skill.

These restaurants don't contain healthy oils. They use the bottom of the barrel because it's the cheapest, it's the most shelf stable, it has no taste, and it's a major benefit to them for their profit margin. And so we should not be going out to eat. remember when I was a kid, it was like a big deal if we went out on a Sunday night to go out to dinner.

Now kids go out to breakfast, lunch and dinner. They barely stay home. Even the parents do it and they go by and get a coffee or a, I don't know what else they get, but you know, all these drinks, I never went out for a drink, and it's a plastic container with a plastic straw and I don't even know how much it is, but there's so much.

There's so much energy getting in the car and driving and going, or, or even ordering into their house, right. To get this drink that they could just make in their home. So it's, it's just crazy to me where, we've, the inmates are running the asylum. Oh,

But you know, the silver lining is it's caused a really great awakening, in all people, I feel like. And that's what we're witnessing now. And it's just going to get, it's just going to grow more and more.

And those who don't, and I'm hoping those who don't, will be enlightened somehow. Maybe that billboard would enlighten them, but you know, people like you, I think are there and available for people to be enlightened. So I'm grateful that you have that message.

[00:45:48] Meredith: Well, I'm so grateful for having this chat with you and it's now time for our finale biohacking with art question.

Are you ready? I think so. if you could describe the power of healing disease with food in any art medium, how would you make it and what would you choose

can be anything?

[00:46:37] Meredith: Yeah. There's some like just extraordinary sand art right there that people have made just portraits similar to what you're talking about.

But I also love what you just described because it addresses also the timing factor of, how we live, like when we eat, You know the detox process like the journey like health is really so much of a journey rather than just a destination It's like a it's a lifestyle. It's not just what you said pill for an ill thing

It takes time to reverse it But it can be done. We can't. The body can. It's amazing to me how resilient the body is. I've heard so many amazing stories, from people being run over by cars and not breaking anything, right? Because they have so much weight or,or I've just heard so many amazing thing and people reversing it.

when I worked with one of the world's greatest golfers, Freddie couples, and he came in and he had massive back pain and he wanted to lose 20 pounds before the masters. And I was like, let's talk about your back pain. And it's Oh, it was a given for him. It just, he traveled with his physical therapist to every tournament.

But I was like, you live on both your homes are on golf courses. You work on golf courses. You are breathing toxins day in and day out. And once we removed that out of his liver and we decreased his inflammation, his back pain went away. That's a perfect example of somebody who is affected by the environmental elements.

of our chemistry or our chemicals, and he was living them and plus he was traveling and eating out all the time because it was a tournament after tournament every week. So he wasn't eating real food. And when he changed his diet, and we addressed the chemicals and the inflammation, we couldn't stop him from going to work or living where he lived, right?

He was still going to breathe this, but we had a mechanism to get it out of his body. That's where his body healed.

But just very briefly, tell us how people can connect with you and learn more.

It's only 12 questions. It's really darn accurate. I also have my book food frame. Their diet is a four letter word. And I also have a course that I put my heart and soul into because of my thyroid journey. I wanted people to avoid all the tears and the time and the money that I went through. to heal my thyroid.

And so that comprehends, of course, and how to read your labs and what to eat and what not to eat, what supplements to take, what supplements not to take, achieving optimal thyroid health is on there as well. And, yeah, I love watching people heal.

And remember, as always, the truth will set you free. We will see you all next time. Bye!

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YouTube or on Apple Podcast and pick up a signed copy of my book about how I healed myself from endometriosis on my Instagram at Meredith w Ochoa. Thank you so much for listening and for having the bravery to face your shit and heal yourself.