Host: Our guest for today is an expert in nutritional medicine. Her name is Nancy Guberti and she is the founder of the Total Wellness Empowerment Membership, The Total Wellness Podcast, Look & Feel Great Method, 9 Steps to a Healthier You, Biomedical & Nutritional Interventions for special-needs children, Raising Achievers Podcast and Positively Powerful Parent program. She is recognized as a thought leader in healthy living. Nancy shares her expertise on numerous media outlets including teaching practitioners for desperate homeopathic, teaching at universities, appearing on television, quoted in magazines. She makes many guest appearances on DDP yoga as she believes awareness will empower others to take charge of their health. Nancy, welcome to the show. Thank you for being with us.
Nancy: Thank you so much for having me.
Host: So you're a functional medicine nutritionist, which means you look at the whole person, mind and body, utilizing specific functional medicine lab tests. What is nutritional medicine? Let's start off with that.
Nancy: That’s a great question. So nutritional medicine is really looking how you can align the body, right? So if you are out of alignment, you go to a chiropractor but no one’s actually looking at what you're putting into the body that could cause a misalignment in one's adrenal system, one’s mood, one’s focus, one’s immune system. And with the utilization of functional medicine, which is a non-invasive first morning urine test, we’re able to check 74 markers at how your body is functioning, where’s the overgrowth, where’s the depletion. And then, I customize a regimen using food as well as natural supplements to get the body back in alignment.
Host: What did those 74 markers tell you about a person?
Nancy: It’s a great, great question. First, it would show your GI health. Do you have beneficial bacteria? Do you have bad bacteria? Do you have clostridia? Do you have botulism? Do you have diseases from the past? Food poisoning? Even when women get Botox we could see that in their gut. So we look to see how the bacteria levels are. Then we look at the candida, which is a fungus. And if that’s there that leads into a sugar cravings, carbohydrate cravings, mental fogginess, you have what people come in and say “I have executive ADD” but they may just have a candida overgrowth. So that’s like the first 18 markers, really going into the gut. And we understand that the gut is the core of exercise where everybody going crazy with abs, right? Six pack, twelve pack, whatever pack, but we forget that when it comes to health. So we look at the gut. Then we look at how do you break down foods. Can you break down fats? You know Keto diet, everybody is having a lot of fats, but if you can't break them down it’ll go in your blood and you could perhaps have something called fatty acid oxidation or high cholesterol. So we look at the fat, we look can you break down carbohydrates or are you prediabetic. Can you break down the proteins and that’s what we call Krebs cycle and Mitochondria. So can you turn your food into energy? Do you have that energy? Do you feel alive when you eat or do you feel like you have a food coma and you are exhausted? We look at that. Then we look at one’s neurotransmitters, the adrenal system, the fight or flight. We want to know, do you have serotonin? So we hear serotonin uptake medication and antidepressants, and I'm not saying anything wrong with medications if they help you, but they don’t typically raise the body. So we want to see where is your serotonin to begin with because anyone who are on antidepressants always have low serotonin in the test. As well as they can have food intolerances because it is linked to the immune system, we check your dopamine, your adrenal, your excitotoxins because certain foods excite the body and kill the brain cells and your nerve cells. We want to know that. Then it’s going to check amino acid, check your nutritional markers, your B6, your Vitamin C. So everybody needs to take quality vitamin C because that's a precursor to something called glutathione, which is the major antioxidant to protect your body against cancer and degenerative diseases. And then we look at liver detoxification and can you detoxify and few other things.
Host: A few? That’s quite a bit. I think I should schedule an appointment with my nearest medicine nutritionist right away. I was not aware that there was so much information in the markers that you mentioned could tell you so much about your body and how well you are or how unwell you are. And I just learned a couple of new words, executive ADD. I never heard of that before either. And then you proceed after you take a look at people's tests. You then proceed to guide them on living healthier by prescribing what?
Nancy: First of all, I have a seven-page intake form and people often say, “Oh, I’m healthy”. And then they start to write down what they're eating, what they’re drinking, what they're using on their body, inside their body, you know? Because you want to look at the whole thing. And once I see that, I customize a regimen that will basically put their body back in balance. They can be eating imbalanced, eating too much food in one area and not in the other. They can be very stressed out and not know how to deal with stress in a healthy manner. They may be going for vices that will throw out their body even more. So I see a lot of recovering alcoholics, drug addicts who have imbalances in their adrenal system that we then balance out through food and certain protocols. So I have accountability, which everybody needs at least at the beginning, and online videos as well as Skype, which is fantastic. You can speak to anyone, anywhere and is a combination of supplementation as well as food. For instant, I don't believe in a multivitamin because it has little amounts of everything. But if a person means more B6 or more vitamin C than the typical multi and nothing else, why take it?
Host: But everyone says you've got to take vitamins, they’re so important.
Nancy: Well, if you can't break down your food and if your food is not organic and it’s genetically modified, it can modify your DNA. So then you will need supplementation but quality supplementation because the supplements nowadays can also have genetically modified ingredients.
Host: When people generally come to you and they have an appointment, what are they dealing with most generally these days? What are the most common things that you see amongst your patients and how do you help them?
Nancy: So lately it's a lot of weight management issues. It is a lot of “I'm tired”, “I can't get motivated”, “I’m not happy”, “I have a loss of libido”, also very serious cancers. So Stage 3, Stage 4 cancers where the doctors basically say “Get your affairs in order. We can't do chemo, we can't do radiation”. So we see that as young as 13 all the way up to 90’s. I also see a lot of dementia, younger these days. So I also like to run a test called Glyphosate to see what that level is in your body because it's linked to dementia, cancer, ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Aclerosis), MS (Multiple Sclerosis), all degenerative diseases, memory disorders, as well as behavioural.
Host: Should we be concerned about glyphosate?
Nancy: Yes.
Host: Okay, so what is glyphosate? You briefly mentioned it. Is there a test for it?
Nancy: It’s the same urine test, first morning urine test. We have a second, we use the same specimen to run this organic acid test that checks 74 markers. Then I like to check the glyphosate and that will show the percentage of this chemical that is carcinogenic in your body.
Host: Is this a natural chemical in my body or is it something formed?
Nancy: It's made from Monsanto, which was just brought out by Bayer and they are losing the court cases. So, there have been three individuals that have cancer. One was awarded close to 300 million, one with 80 million, one was 70 million because there is no cure for them. You can breathe it in, you can ingest it. And so if you run the organic acid test and you can't detoxify, the glyphosate could be so elevated that it could trigger these degenerative diseases.
Host: And you’re seeing it as becoming more common. Is this something contained in food or medicine?
Nancy: So this gets me so irate that I put together a free educational combination of email and video series that shows all the foods that are loaded with glyphosate and then what you can do to remove it if you don't want to get tested. But more and more people want to get tested now before they get cancer and then cancer patients want to know if they have it in them because then they may have a lawsuit, but that's a little too late. If you play golf and the golf course sprays, you’re breathing it in. So if you are eating non-organic food, you’re ingesting it. So what cancer is more rampant these days, but our genetic makeup is not the same. What is affecting all of this?
Host: And if we go to your website, nancyguberti.com, the last tab on the right is Glyphosate Awareness and we can enter in our name and email address and get all this information about glyphosate.
Nancy: Exactly and then also on my Facebook page on the business page, because on my personal page people don't like seeing all, so I put motivational quotes. But on my business page, I put all of the latest scientific research not only of this glyphosate, but Zantac, for instance causes cancer. So I put that information there in case you're taking Zantac or you know someone who is. And then I have a private free Facebook group where I put other information in there, people asked questions about their own health. It's just about sharing the knowledge at this stage of my life.
Host: So your Facebook, the public page is facebook.com/NancyGubertiNG, and that's where all the latest updates and the post that you have about different types of the weed killer and chemicals and glyphosate and a lot of information there as well. Let me retract a little bit and ask you a question, for a personal. And the personal question is, when we talked about total wellness and you're an expert in it and this is what you do day in day out for the last two decades, what does total wellness mean to you and how do you go about achieving it?
Nancy: That’s such a lovely question. So for me, total wellness is being grounded of my mind, my thoughts of every motive, every goal, every passion. It’s how I speak to others and it's what I fuel my body with. I don’t want anything toxic in my body, on my body and I don’t want to be surrounded by toxic people. If I encounter toxic people, I pray for them that they have a wonderful life. So that’s what total wellness is to me and I'm blessed to be surrounded by three lovely men, two are my own blood, my sons and my husband and then my family that has gone to a better place now.
Host: When you say toxic people I’m assuming people who are negative, pessimistic, have a negative outlook on life.
Nancy: Yes and you know mindset is key with total wellness. We could run the test. I could give you the best protocol but A, if you say “Screw it. I don't want to do it” and you know “I’m a miserable person”, “Everything’s not to work”, “I don't want to work out”, “I don't want to do anything”, “I don’t want to better my life”, they’re not going to get great results and then not usually happy.
Host: So it all starts here first?
Nancy: Yes.
Host: And then it goes down into the body.
Nancy: The body definitely has control and is controlled by the mind. There is a chemical messenger pathway between the mind, the stomach, and our nerve cells. It’s just science as well.
Host: So if you encounter people like that who are your patients, I know you do yoga, you do meditation, you are into homeopathic medicine as well. Starting with the mind, starting with stress, skepticism, negativity, how do you ask your patients to eliminate all these things? Or do you just tell them just stop or is there a process here?
Nancy: No. I really get to know the people I work with. So when someone comes to me, I want to make sure they are committed because it’s going to be a partnership. And I’m going to know about them and I almost take it on. I think about and I think of their issues and I give them strategies.
“Hey, how about you want to try A, B or C? Let's try one at a time and let me know how that works with you. And when it stopped serving you. let's go to something else”.
Because ultimately the goal is to have the person reach optimal health. That's the ultimate goal. So it really never stops. I have people, I've been working with them for over 15 years and I've been doing this for 18, right?
Host: So you mentioned your husband and your two children. How do you take care of the wellness of your family? Can I start with getting my children to lead healthier lives?
Nancy: It's great. That’s really great. So I have a program called Raising Achievers. That's really raising achievers and givers. And I got into this because my youngest son, who is now 21, had a liver disorder. And doctors do not know what his future would be like and they can only prescribe medication. So I got into a functional medicine, I went back for an IMS (Information Management System) for the education to really heal him, never start a practice. And through that, that's how I did positive parenting and it’s powerful. It's easy to have a child, that's the fun part, right? But mentoring them, raising them, teaching them the importance of life is really when your work comes in. So not living for your kids but getting to understand what they love, their passions and mentoring them on that. And providing them safe environment and opportunities to excel, always for the betterment of humanity and how they then can give back. Also teaching them about their body and how the food fuels them and not be overbearing. And not say “You have to do it this way”. “Oh, you want to try that? Go ahead”. But also check how you feel and see how you feel around other people. Find like-minded individuals. So it's an everyday process, you know? And then I think a big problem is when kids then go to middle school or high school even college. The parents take a seat, a step back and maybe think the kids have their peers, but if their peers are not well grounded it could be a problem. So you always want to keep the line of communication always there and teach that actions have consequences. And I would tell my kids that you should do your best, not because you have to report to me but at the end of the day you look in the mirror to yourself and answer and reflect upon your day. Did you try your best? When you're in school, did you do your best? I don’t care if that was an A or C. Did you do your best? When you’re with a friend, were you at your best friend? When you're playing, did you try the best? Answer to your self.
Host: My fridge is relatively filled with healthy things. We have a household full of children and I’m concerned about their well-being. I’m concerned about their health and want them to be, you know, not have any medical issues in the future like cholesterol or diabetes, things like that. These things concerned me. So my fridge is filled with healthy things, milk, eggs, it’s got fruits and vegetables. We stay away from soda pop, okay? No chips, no snacks apart from granola bars. We have cereal, you know the corn flakes and the checks in them, whatever. Despite that, despite doing all of this, what other changes could I make to my family and my family's diet or my buying habits to further improve on their wellness?
Nancy: Well, few things. The cereals, if they’re not organic, they’re loaded with pesticides. So that’s one thing. I would join the Glyphosate Awareness email and see which ones. So oats, anything oats loaded with glyphosate. And there are some companies that are organic that is still contaminated. So I would look at that. I would also look at how much protein all the meals balanced – protein, carbohydrates and sugar. Sugar should be limited to 21 grams a day. Is it? When you start adding it all up, it may not be. And then I would watch educational films, documentaries that you could pick up at the library. “The Future of Food”, I have a whole list on the website so you could watch those together and make it fun and educational. And the milk should also be organic, the age should be organic. Otherwise, they have antibiotics and growth hormones, which is estrogen and that's not good. You should also check how one is sleeping. Do they exercise? Do they stay hydrated with enough water? How’s their mental outlook? How’s their mood? Ask, you know? And if they're having a bad day, discuss it. Do they go to comfort food? What is the comfort food? Go shopping together and then if you want to take them on a… How old are these children?
Host: 18 (years old), 16 (years old), 8 years old. Lot of variety. We have 3 year old, 4 year old, nieces and nephews running around the house.
Nancy: For the ones that are old enough, I would have them look at the company themselves. Johnson & Johnson, for instance, that made the talcum powder that cause cancer. And now many companies are adding organic products like Heinz. Heinz ketchup is organic. So have them really understand the companies and are they doing it for health (the company) or profit.
Host: That's funny you should mention. On my last shopping trip, just this week, I saw a more expensive Heinz tomato ketchup and I was like, “Why is this more expensive in it?” It said organic on it. Well, I have not seen this before. This is interesting. It might've been out there for a long time. I just saw that for the first time this week. So I have to talk to you about, you mentioned it several times and I think it's the opportune moment to talk about this. Does organic mean better? Should I be buying organic instead of regular? What's the pros and cons to this?
Nancy: So organic is more available now. You can even get it in grocery stores. In the States, it's available in regular grocery stores as well as health food stores as well as whole foods. So that's fantastic.
Host: So the Costco’s and the Walmart’s will have organic food?
Nancy: Costco, yes and I think Walmart as well. They all have to be competitive and the prices have gone down so that's fantastic. So if I had a choice between putting pesticides in my body that could potentially cause cancer or having something organic that doesn't have the pesticides, I’m going with that because the organic produce has more abundance of nutrients. Studies have shown that because the soil is not contaminated. The seed is not contaminated. If you have a garden, they sell organic soil. I know at Home Depot they do and they have organic seed so we grow our own food as well. So yes, you want to go with organic to lessen the toxic load of the body and then it all goes back to, “Do we know if we can detoxify?”. Without a test, it’s a guess, right? If a person cannot detoxify, the pesticides can accumulate. And it may not happen immediately like an anaphylactic reaction does, it take ten years to accumulate. So I would avoid that because of the problems that it can cause.
Host: Have you seen the difference between the test results of your patients after you told them to eliminate all these things and go organic?
Nancy: Yes. So we usually do this annually and I will say that every person that comes in with cancer, either current or past, is loaded with the toxin. That's one and they never can detoxify. And their adrenal system is affected as well. So there's a pattern. And when you remove the toxins and assist the body to function optimally then the numbers come down. It takes awhile, doesn't happen 24 hours, but it does happen. For instance I have one person who has Stage 4 and the doctors could not do any treatment and he (patient) had a 6.2 tumor and it went down to 2 on its own without treatment, without conventional treatment just by changing his food and taking the supplements that his body needed. And now the doctors are baffled and they wanted to use him as a case study.
Host: Really? You mentioned toxins have an effective of cancer, that's the ultimate effect I'm sure. What other effects does it have on my health or people's health?
Nancy: So that’s great question. Weight gain, it affects the thyroid, it affects the hormones.
Host: Really? Okay.
Nancy: 100%.Your body is clogged like a pipe and now you cannot absorb nutrients. What the problem is people live with daily ailments and they’re like, “Oh, I’m getting older” or “I haven’t worked out” or “I’m just stressed out at work”. They find an excuse to justify the ailment. So it is a problem and toxins can also affect one's neurotransmitters, hormones, sleep, libido through hormones, adrenal and thyroid and skin.
Host: Little awhile ago you mentioned GMO's and how they can alter your DNA. I like to learn more about this. How does that happen? What are GMO's? How do they alter my DNA? What's going on?
Nancy: So GMO's are Genetically Modified Organisms that are created in a lab and what it does is, it rearrange the molecule of the biology of an individual. It's supposed to do that for what it's targeting. A GMO cropped are supposed to be resistant to certain insects and it will affect that insect, but they never looked at how it could modify the animals that it's being fed to. For instance a cow will be fed genetically modified food and it will affect the code of proteins. It can alter fish. It can also affect our genes as well with genes pricing. So it's a genetic engineering that you can’t say, “Here use this but only go after this one thing when I'm feeding it to animals and humans as well”.
Host: So basically it gets into the food chain and it affects everything in that chain all the way up to us.
Nancy: Yes, just the same way when you have, say halibut. And that's a fish that is loaded with mercury and you look at what it ate and if it ate all these other fish and different things in the sea that are loaded with the toxin, it accumulates. The same way, they say you have high mercury fishes, we will turn into high toxin people by what we’re ingesting.
Host: Okay, I come across on the internet on a daily basis. This is a pressure wash for the insides in your gut and this and then click on this and I’m being bombarded with information about detoxifying and taking care of my gut. Is there truth to that? Why is your gut really the core of your health?
Nancy: Okay, so that is like a two-question here. So let me go first for the click bait and that's a new way of marketing, right? So the problem with doing these cleansers or detoxifications, if you don't know if your body is clogged, has the ability to detoxify, who’s to say it’s going to work? And lots of times people feel like garbage when they do that. It could be that they’re really toxic or could be that their body cannot detoxify because some of these products are designed to pull but then they have to push. They have to pull the toxins out of the cells and then they have to weave the body and if your body can't do that it's going to be a problem. It’s just going to recirculate. So I would watch what you're going to try and the claims that they say, right? So that’s one thing and that goes back to being a very smart consumer or savvy consumer. The second thing is, yes, again we talked about the gut being the core, right? Our immune system is located in our gut. Our serotonin is produced in our gut, that’s the adrenal system for the fight or flight mode. Everything happens here. So now, say I can't break down my food and I can't turn it into energy. Without that there is no life. It’s as simple as that. So everything comes here. You know, people will then make associations if they’re nervous, they’ll feel butterflies or their stomach will bother them. That’s the adrenal system. There's chemical messengers that go from the gut to our brain. It's well-established. It’s not voodoo. And what I like is since I came from brokerage and I came from a very researched-driven numbers fact career prior, I have to see science. I have to see them black and white and that's why I use laboratories that make sense that actually provide information. But it has to have science and there's enough science to show the gut-brain connection, the immune system, our mood, our adrenal system, our serotonin, everything’s at the gut. So, you want to watch how you treat your gut and you want to be mindful and aware how you feel. “How did you feel when you ate that?” “How did you feel when you are in that stress environment?” You know stress can shut down digestion as well, right? So we have to look at all these aspects and that's where we look at the whole person.
Host: And what should we be doing for our gut or taking care of it or what are the steps that we need to take?
Nancy: The first thing I would say is keep a food journal. Get to know yourself. Get to know what you eat and when you eat it and why you eat it and how do you feel. Do you have energy? Do you have a bowel movement? Does your skin look good? How’s your mood? All these things. Keep a journal not only of what you're eating but how it affects you – your sleep, your mood, your energy, everything; because now, this is customized to you and the more you are aware, the better. So I love probiotics but for someone who has a suppressed weakened immune system and their white blood cells are very very low, say they're going through really strong chemotherapy, they couldn’t handle the probiotics. Again, it has to be very customized to what health you are experiencing or what crisis, what is your goal and how is your body functioning at the least. If you have a CBC, which is a Complete Blood Count, make sure that you check your vitamin D. Check your magnesium. If they could check your vitamins C, have them check. It all depends the state, the country and everything else what people could check. Get a copy of it and be aware, look at them because the doctor will be just like, “Oh, it’s great”, “It's in the right range”, “This is lower”, “This is high”. Not taking into account what you're going through or what you want to achieve. So I would say the first step to having any optimal health, be it gut, mind or body, is to be aware and keep track of what's going on.
Host: That is a very sound advice. That is a very good advice.
Nancy: Thank you.
Host: It comes down to this. You mentioned at the beginning about 45 minutes ago that your patients come up to, they have problems. One of them is weight and it's the biggest conversation thing and piece that we have. It's always a struggle, diets, what do we do, the exercise, the balance. Everyone has their own take on things, do this, do that, the intermittent fasting, the Keto, the Atkins. So much information is being bombarded at us and then we tried everything and sometimes diets don't work.
Nancy: Exactly. It’s so funny because I have an educational class called Diets Don't Work and I've seen it through the years that when people diet, if they have to go to a Ball Mixer, they have a graduation or a wedding, they’re going to make it happen. And then the day after they gouge themselves and they gain it back because it’s deprivation, it’s not a lifestyle. And this goes back to how your body is functioning, right? So, many times the neurotransmitters will affect your health and your gut. If you do have candida overgrowth, you want to get rid of that because that actually starts you to lose weight and it also helps with sugar and carbohydrate cravings if you have that problem. If you're depressed and you eat out of emotions, then we look really serious into your neurotransmitters because we can't fix that, when depriving you. So it also is the mindset that this is not a diet, this has to be enjoyable. What is it that you like? Sometimes it's better like, “Oh, you want that piece of bread?”. So instead of obsessing about it and having every other bad thing, have that piece of bread and let’s find out why you need that. It's really education and empowerment and mindfulness that’s needed, but again it goes back to you start with the journal you could see how you are eating. And so many people would take a lot fats, they’ll eat “Oh, I’m going to go on this Keto thing” and it backfires and they gain weight because they can't break down the fat. So then it accumulates. So again, there is not one-size-fits-all. It has to be customized to how are you functioning and where is your mindset.
Host: I think the take away from this conversation is that, before we start inflicting any kind of self-diagnosis for diets and treating ourselves, it's better to consult a professional. Especially someone in nutrition, in nutritional medicine and then take the first steps and figure out how we can live healthier lives.
Nancy: I think that's great. I will also say this, you also want to know who you're going to. If they are a Keto person, they’re going to say, “This is what’s going to work”. You have to make sure that they're going to customize it to you, not just say “Okay, this is what you need to do and blah blah blah and it works for everybody”. But I’m not everybody. I’m unique. So make sure that you understand who you are going to and what their approach is and ask if they customize it to what you need.
Host: Okay, I might have this wrong, I could probably edit this out. Have you written the book Healthy Living Everyday or are you in the process of writing it?
Nancy: So it’s off to being published. So hopefully in two weeks it will be available on Amazon.
Host: Nancy tell us about the publications and the books you've written in the past about wellness and about health and where we can get them from?
Nancy: Okay, well thank you. So I put together this Healthy Living Everyday and it is 365 days and I even added in a bonus day for leap years. And it teaches everyday something that I have learned over the past 18 years. It's a combination of health, what you can do for mind, body and spirit because what I’ve noticed and what we talked about is you need all of them to be in alignment to reach healthy living. So it's on Amazon as a Kindle as well as a paperback and then coming out shortly. After that will be accountability journals for 90 days because if we get it for 90 days we’re good then you know that you could keep it going. It's more daunting to look at a whole year and like New Year's resolutions, but if we break them down into 90 days we have a few times during the year either to get it right or to enhance upon the first 90 days.
Host: Okay, wonderful. And all this information is also available on your website, nancyguberti.com, and on your Facebook page as well it's facebook.com/NancyGubertiNG that's your public page. And I’m assuming you are on Instagram or Twitter as well?
Nancy: Yes. On Twitter and Instagram I put everything that I eat on there because people like “What do you eat?”. Okay, so I put all the pictures there on Instagram. It’s just under Nancy Guberti. And then on Pinterest, I have also Nancy Guberti. There are several boards on there but there is one for gluten-free organic foods and I take pictures of the products that I use as well, not only for food but even, I know we didn’t get to talk about personal care products, but also for that because that's a whole another thing that can affect your endocrine and thyroid and toxic buildup. So I take pictures, I try to share as much as I can and then The Total Wellness Podcast where we break down certain topics and on YouTube as well.
Host: Wonderful. Nancy, thank you so much for being with us on the podcast today and I'm sure you know our listeners will be able to get in touch with you if they want to ask you any questions or sign up to your newsletter and listen to your podcast, review your videos on YouTube. And I'm really looking forward to adding you on Pinterest and see if you have any storyboards or boards there so I can repin them as well because I love the following stuff. I’m really into food and everything. It’s fantastic. Thank you so much for being with us today.
Nancy: It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.
