Today, I am delighted to reconnect with my friend colleague Teri Cochrane, who previously joined me for episodes 56 and 201. Teri is a decoder of the human body, entrepreneur, speaker, and advisor. In her novel approach to integrative health, honed through decades of clinical experience and exceptional client outcomes, she focuses on the dynamic nature of individual health, incorporating insights from epigenetics, biochemistry, quantum physics, and nutrition.
We begin our conversation today by diving into health sovereignty. We discuss the disrupted mirror effect and the standard American diet, exploring the impact of mold and mycotoxins, glyphosate, amyloids, and oxalates, and identifying foods to avoid. We examine the benefits of the game and wildaterian diets, looking at the challenges of weight loss resistance, the concept of the dirty cupcake, and the psychology of eating.
I am sure you will find this informative discussion with Teri Cochrane enlightening and enjoyable.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
Why it is essential to get actively involved in your health and wellness, particularly in the post-pandemic environment
What spike proteins represent, and how they can affect you
Teri explains the disrupted mirror effect
Which foods are the amyloid-rich foods we should avoid?
How all metabolic diseases in the US stem from the food we eat, what we wear, and what we use in our environment
How mold and mycotoxins impact our health
The problem with industrialized farming
How oral probiotics increase our histamine load
The benefits of consuming wild-sourced protein
Some creative ways to make better food choices
Which supplements are the best ones?
“I believe that amyloids and glyphosate are the two most destructive
implications to our health paradigm.”
-Teri Cochrane
Connect with Cynthia Thurlow
Follow on Twitter
Check out Cynthia’s website
Submit your questions to support@cynthiathurlow.com
Connect with Teri Cochrane
Book Mentioned
Transcript:
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:02] Welcome to Everyday Wellness podcast. I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower, and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives.
[00:00:29] Today, I had the honor of connecting with my friend and colleague, Teri Cochrane. She previously joined me on Episodes 56 and 201. She is a pioneer in epigenetics and Precision Wellness. She is a decoder of the human body, entrepreneur, speaker, and advisor. Through decades of clinical work and unprecedented client results, she has developed a novel approach to integrative health that focuses on the ever-shifting needs of the individual and examines the intersection of epigenetics, biochemistry, quantum physics, and nutrition.
[00:01:03] Today, we started our conversation on health sovereignty, the disrupted mirror effect and the standard American diet, the impact of mold and mycotoxins, glyphosate and amyloids as well as oxalates, foods to avoid, the role of game and wildatarian approaches, the impact of weight loss resistance and the dirty cupcake and last but not least, the psychology of eating. You will find this to be an informative and amazing conversation. I know you will enjoy it.
[00:01:39] Welcome Teri. So, good to have you back on the podcast my friend. It's always a pleasure to share your gifts with my community.
Teri Cochrane: [00:01:46] So happy to be back.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:01:48] Yes, let's talk about what is going on in the world right now. I know that you've been speaking out more about the concept of health sovereignty, why it's so important to be actively involved in our health and our wellness and communication with our healthcare team. What does that represent to you in this post pandemic environment?
Teri Cochrane: [00:02:12] Really health sovereignty is a term of art that I think was born through the pandemic. When at the beginning we really lost our sovereignty, we lost our power to think for ourselves, to act for ourselves, to behave in community and engage in community. And as we have resocialized over these last four plus years, what's still missing is our health sovereignty. And I believe it's because fundamentally, the mechanisms of action in the body changed during the pandemic. And even skilled physicians, practitioners are still trying to untangle what those changes are. And so, part of little did I know that over these 20 years of my working in this iterative applied kinesiology, which has become like a real time lab for me because we're seeing changes in real time. Body intelligence is being shown to me through every client that walks through the door.
[00:03:20] Is that there'd be such significant mechanisms of action where actually now histamine response can actually turn into type 1 diabetes or a heart attack or idiopathic anxiety. And that histamine is driven by the spike protein that turns on certain receptors, or that you're being hijacked with uterus, they're growing cysts in a 23-year-old as big as cantaloupes, because the spike protein has hijacked GABA, which is necessary for follicular balance in the ovaries. And also, GABA is there in the uterus, in the lining, the cervix. And so, we can't treat things the way we treated them before. But if we understand and we start paying attention and start following and connecting the dots, I really believe we can get back to health sovereignty.
[00:04:16] And I'm becoming a very big disruptor in the space in terms of what does that mean and how do we claim it? First, we have to understand that. We have to be our own advocate, and we have to have advocates for us listening [chuckles] when we've been given scary diagnoses which are falling down on people's hearts on the daily. Two is we need to question everything, and three is start connecting new dots again. So, really connect those new dots.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:04:43] And I think that it certainly has been my experience interviewing experts on the podcast over the last several years that there is greater concern for not just COVID or the pandemic or the virus, or however we want to represent it. But you don't necessarily have to have received the vaccine to be impacted by these spike proteins. Can we speak to what the spike proteins represent and how, even if you haven't per se had the vaccine, that you can be impacted? Because I think this is quite significant, and I'm hearing this across different spectrums in physician friends, nurse practitioners, experts like yourself, researchers, that we haven't fully appreciated what this represents yet, that there is probably more to come than what we're aware of right now.
Teri Cochrane: Absolutely. And so, I pointed you've been spiked through vaccine, through actually getting COVID itself or being in the ethos of the spike protein. We are constantly trying to reestablish homeostasis within our body in a spike protein environment. And for me, I know I've been spiked when my blood sugar drops. I don't have it one on now, but I wear a continuing glucose monitor pretty much all the time. My hemoglobin A1c is beautiful. It was 4.8 to 5.0. No problem with diabetes. But when I was being spiked, I would have a significant drop in blood sugar, and there's a reason for that, but that was my telltale sign. And so, what's happened is, and I've done deep research on this, and again, because I feel like my clinic is a lab, [laughs] I feel like I'm getting real time every time feedback.
[00:06:38] And I feel like there have been many flavors of the spike protein with variants in the spike protein. Initially, what we saw was really a big hijacking of GABA, and I talked just to that. But generally, what the spike protein does is it uses the angiotensin converting enzyme 2 to bring itself into the cells. But when that happens, there's a cascade effect that occurs. So, ACE 2 is responsible for what we know is angiotensin 1 through 7. When that's in play, everything is happy. We have fluid balance, we have insulin balance, we have follicular balance, we have anti-apoptosis.
[00:07:26] But what that mechanism of action does, it gets shut down. And now you have angiotensin II, not angiotensin converting enzyme 2, but angiotensin II is in play. And then what happens? Fibrogenicity, insulin dysregulation, we have the follicular development being hijacked. Why? Because ACE is responsible for GABA, and GABA is responsible for insulin regulation, fluid balance. It's responsible for the central nervous system. We're seeing a lot of dysautonomia. So, when GABA gets hijacked, that's what happens. So that was the first flavor of COVID. [chuckles] And then we had what I called COVID GI. So, then the next variance of COVID spike protein dysregulated L-Tyrosine in the gut, lactobacillus in the gut. It created a histamine receptor, which was then increasing our hydrogen sulfide, which was causing what was deemed to be small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. But it wasn't necessarily the bacteria, it was hydrogen sulfide setting off a sulfur histamine cascade. And then we have had, so, I call it COVID psychosis, COVID endocrine, COVID nervous system because of the amyloids.
[00:08:40] Oh, my goodness, Cynthia, I've been preaching about amyloids for over eight years. I feel like I almost wrote The Wildatarian book in advance of COVID. Because what I have now learned and proven is that the four disruptors of protein, fat, sulfur, and oxalate, the spike protein does the exact same thing. I've deemed it the disrupted mirror effect, and so this disrupted mirror effect, why? Because COVID initiates seven vectors of amyloid genesis. What does amyloid do? We have Alzheimer's, dementia, ALS. We just have a friend of mine in our community. They just pulled the plug on his friend at 52 with ALS. Alzheimer's is now the leading cause of death in the United States. That was within the last four years. But it's not even taking the effects of the pandemic. So, amyloids are a big deal.
[00:09:33] And amyloids are responsible for which I've also been preaching the reactivation of viral loads. The Epstein-Barr virus, the cytomegalovirus virus, the herpes virus, and the varicella virus is on fire. It's all in the clinical literature. So, if you're eating an amyloid burdened food supply and you've been on this planet [chuckles], you have to be very careful, unilaterally, unequivocally saying, if you're eating an amyloid-rich food supply, you're shortening your life. It's that severe.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:10:06] So, for the benefit of listeners that may not be familiarized with your work, or perhaps have missed our first two podcasts together, what are those amyloid-rich foods that you are speaking to?
Teri Cochrane: [00:10:19] So, I have deemed chicken to be the dirty bird. So, generally, what has happened is that through industrialized farming, through the crowding condition of animals, through the mistreatment of animals, through the antibiotics and the pesticides and the food supply that they are eating, they started creating within their tissue, which is indestructible by any kind of cooking supply, these amyloids. Amyloids are truncated protein structures that are indigestible. And research shows that amyloids once consumed cannot be broken down or very difficult to be broken down. And then what they do is they'll go and gather in specific tissue. It's tissue specific, such as diabetes. It's systemic, such as lymphoma, I cannot tell you cancer is up 4000%. I've never seen so much cancer in my practice as I have in the last, specifically, year. And so, it harbors there.
[00:11:22] And not only does it land in the tissues, it's responsible for reactivating the viruses that have lived within us for many years. Most of us, if we again lived on this planet, we are exposed to Epstein-Barr that was mononucleosis, varicella, that's chickenpox, cytomegaly, which is the other side of mononucleosis, the HSV 1 to 6. Most of us have been exposed, yet these viruses live commensally within us, only 43% of us are our own cells. The rest are not our cells, it's virus, pathogens, fungi, parasites. So, to think we can kill them, it's not realistic, but we have to.
[00:12:02] What I say is, have everybody have a seat at the UN. We get one to vote, [chuckles] and everybody's living happily instead of becoming bullies in the sandbox. But this food supply-- So, eight years ago, I was really speaking to this epidemic of autoimmunity, which back then, one in 14 was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. And these autoimmune diseases were really, I believe, in large part being contributed or being exacerbated by these viruses that hadn't been reactivated in large part by amyloids and mycotoxins, which is also part of the pandemic picture, because mycotoxins build biofilm, and biofilm feeds amyloids, and then the amyloids feed biofilm, which then creates a pathogenic storm within our body. So, eight years ago, I started saying, “Please be aware of amyloid rich foods. They're going to contribute to autoimmunity, to chronic illness, and so forth.”
[00:12:57] And, Cynthia, 90% of the $4.5 trillion budget that we have for health is related to chronic conditions and every chronic condition in the US is a metabolic disease. That means that it is driven by the food we eat, what we put in on or around us.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:13:18] Yeah, it's so interesting that, certainly when I trained back in the 1990s, there was little to no discussion around food. We were back during the food guide pyramid. This preceded my plate. And definitely having a child that had life-threatening food allergies caused me to start thinking about food differently before most of my other traditionally trained allopathic peers. And what I've come to find is that if 70% of us in the United States are eating ultra-processed foods every day, we are exposed to toxins at a level that we have never experienced before. And so, I think a lot of what you’re speaking to is it’s a byproduct of our modern-day lifestyles that is creating this perfect storm for all this poor metabolic health and the autoimmunity, the higher rates of cancer, the infertility concerns.
[00:14:11] Now, I would love to speak to not just amyloids, but when we talk about mold and mycotoxins, I feel like for a lot of people, it seems incredibly intangible. They're like, sometimes there's mold in my shower. We know that 25% of us are at greater risk for susceptibility to mold or mycotoxins, just based on our genetic patterning. And so, when you're talking to your clients about mold, what are some of the big picture things you speak to them about to make them be more attuned to their environment and whether it's home or work or when they travel, which I know probably for all of us, when we travel, we're really at the mercy of where we're staying. We may have zero control over the moldy environment in a hotel as an example.
Teri Cochrane: [00:14:57] Absolutely. That's a great question. So, once again, the food supply really bred by industrialized farming. When you think of corn and soya being our number one and two crops produced in the United States, and 90% of them are genetically modified, on corn grows a very toxic mold substance. So, Michael Pollan long ago made the quote, “We're a bunch of walking corn sticks because corn is everywhere.” I slightly adapted it to say we're a bunch of walking mold sticks, [laughs] because if you're eating corn, you're eating mold. And what's been very interesting over the course of, again, industrialized farming is that with the advent of glyphosate, which over 280 million pounds of glyphosates are sprayed in the US crops annually and 100 countries are still using glyphosate.
[00:15:56] Glyphosate has been, I believe that between amyloids and glyphosate, those are the two most destructive implications to our health paradigm. And that's why, back to health sovereignty we're informed, we can move and navigate around it even in this pandemic. And so, why is glyphosate correlated to mold? Well, glyphosate inhibits the production of the Oxalobacter bacteria, which is responsible for breaking down oxalates in our system. And oxalates and Aspergillus and mold, they play together, they intersect. And guess what the spike protein does? It increases the oxalate burden by drawing calcium. So, I call oxalates glass shards. So, now oxalates are feeding the mold burden, and the mold burden is feeding oxalates and mycotoxins. Mold and mycotoxins and fungi, I look at them very similarly in the same family because they have biofilm.
[00:17:01] And so, we are now plagued with lack of Oxalo bacteria in our bodies that don't help us form what is necessary to break down that oxalate burden. We are walking mold sticks. 25% of the sugar we consume is in liquid form. Sugar is going to feed the mold burden. Mold has been encased in our tight homes because it's not breathing. Plastics anything that's sealed is going to ferment. So, we're living in a very high mold environment plus the climate has changed, that you know I work with NASA, and so temperatures have risen faster than we have noted. And so, mold in the environment is ever growing. And so, we are effectively living in a spore environment now.
[00:17:53] When we are in balance with ourselves, we can manage that, because the body is constantly doing karate chops on things that are out of balance. But mold is very, very important to understand because it ties back to oxalates. Because the mold creates the biofilm, the biofilm will feed the amyloid burden, and then I call it the ping pong effect, and then that amyloid will feed back to the mold. Why is mold so important in terms of managing it? Because it has to do with mental health and particularly autism.
[00:18:26] I think the latest statistics now say that one in 33 boys are autistic, when you look at in the work of Yasko, who was one of the leaders in autism, she long ago said, “It's tied to an oxalate burden” because oxalates disrupt dopamine and serotonin, which the majority of those two neurotransmitters are made in our GI tract. So, how do we manage it? We have to be aware of what are oxalate-rich foods. We have to be aware of what is our environment. We have to breathe, we have to use modulators, not killers. Again, if we try to kill, kill, kill, it again, disrupts the terrain within us because we have bacteria all in, on, and around us as well. So, we have to be modulating it instead of trying to completely eradicate.
[00:19:22] And so, prebiotics that are natural, like artichoke, that aren't any of the saccharides, any of the sugars. Sugars, I don't believe, are good. I don't like inulin as a prebiotic, but I love artichoke. I love asparagus. And so those prebiotics that help us reestablish the probiotics in the gut, because another thing that we have found through this pandemic, Cynthia, with the turning on the histamine receptor gene, probiotics tend to be high histamine. And so, if we're consuming oral probiotics, we're going to increase our histamine load, which then flips the sulfur, which is tied to oxalate at the genetic level. And so, these big 4 [chuckles] once again, the disrupted mirror effect is exacerbating what we are already having strains on our body before the pandemic.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:20:16] Thats so interesting because I first learned about oxalates through our work together. And after my hospitalization five years ago and six weeks of antibiotics, antifungals, and I kept having persistent gut issues even though I was full carnivore at that time. And I think I mentioned to you that I was eating almond flour crackers and it was like a light bulb went off. And you said, I think you probably have an oxalate sensitivity. And so, for anyone listening that's trying to figure out, because these are a constellation of different symptoms that can come together. And if you're working with a nutritionally trained provider, they may not even be putting these pieces together. So, when people come to you, let's speak to middle-aged women, because that's who the preponderance of our listeners are.
[00:21:01] What are some of the signs for you when you're working with someone, whether it's an established patient or someone that's new, what are some of the signs that tip off for you that there is this, as you mentioned, that disrupted mirror effect is magnifying the symptoms they are experiencing.
Teri Cochrane: [00:21:19] Oxalates, particularly for middle-aged women are a big deal. Why is that? As we once again shift our beautiful internal rhythm as we move into perimenopause and menopause, the first hormone to fall is progesterone. And progesterone is necessary, actually, for adrenal balancing because adrenals will shift cortisol. Cortisol is a sugar. It's a stress hormone, cortisol and adrenaline. I call it the dirty cupcake, because it's both a fat and a sugar. And so, as progesterone falls, even though our estrogen numbers are also falling, progesterone is falling precipitously first. So, we become estrogen dominant. What does estrogen the do? Mold feeds estrogen, and estrogen feeds histamine, and estrogen will increase serotonin, so we can become hyper anxious.
[00:22:13] And so when I have somebody that comes in that is feeling brain fog, that they're actually having cystic acne as a 40-something-year-old, that they're becoming fluffy, that their GI is becoming bloated, that there's edema, I look to the oxalate burden, the mold burden, the Candida. Candida will also interrupt the conversion of T4, which is one of our thyroid hormones, to T3. So, you will not be metabolically robust. So, we really have to watch anything that will feed that Candida burden. Again, it's bidirectional. Candida feeds mold, mold feeds Candida, Candida trips your thyroid, Candida is going to hit your ovaries and create cysts, estrogen growth and estrogen is a cell proliferator. And by the way, here we go again, the disrupted mirror effect because GABA has been hijacked.
[00:23:24] GABA was necessary for the making of estradiol, which is our happy protective estrogen. So, when that goes down, as you know, there's three types of estrogen. So, when estradiol goes down, now estrone goes up. So, estrogen is the bad boy. [laughs] And, so, women are coming in and they're getting microcyst in their breasts. If they're lucky. I'm seeing going from zero to third stage metastasized breast cancer over and over and over and or ovarian cyst or ovarian cancer or uterine cancer or dysplasia. And so, we really have to look at those mycotoxins that mold, those oxalates that are healthy for us but are no longer right for us. They used to be healthy. I call them the right/wrong foods. And so, I really look to being extremely careful with women relative to that oxalate burden, the hijacking of GABA, the estrogen overload, which then disrupts metabolic function.
[00:24:35] And also it disrupts because back to the gut, the serotonin and the dopamine, which then people become depressed, anxious, so forth, and they're put on antidepressants, and they really need to be managing their Candida and managing that estrogen burden and supporting with GABA, unless you have a GAD gene, which then GABA can convert to glutamate, but then even then you pulse GABA. So, I know I'm getting very biochemically technical here, but it's really important to know these nuances, because I believe that even in this really uncertain time, with all these hijacking of our mechanisms of action, if we're empowered and we have knowledge, we don't have to be afraid, we just have to move in the right direction to know that we can pretty much resolve anything because the body is so brilliant.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:25:23] Well, it's so interesting to me because putting these little pieces together, as you mentioned, the right/wrong foods, what do you find are the most common right/wrong foods that most of your, let's just again, we'll think about the middle-aged woman corundum. Most of those women are eating unknowingly that are exacerbating or contributing these symptoms. I will say, before I let you answer that, for me fermented foods, there's a happy balance and I was overdoing it. And that tripped off the histamine, which then in the midst of a book launch, developed hives, which I'd never experienced before. So, it is a real phenomenon. This is a real thing.
Teri Cochrane: [00:26:07] It's a real thing. So, what are women told to do, especially in middle age? Build muscle. And what do we do to build muscle? We take a lot of protein powders in. Pea proteins contain mycotoxins. There was just a study that came out that 75% of pea protein actually had heavy metals and over 58% had mycotoxins and lead. So, if we're eating pea protein to try to gain that muscle during perimenopause and menopause, that is no bueno. Also, mycotoxins will build mold. So, pea protein is off the table. No way to pea protein. Another one that's very, very interesting, which we've been told that we need to take as antioxidant, is turmeric. Drink that golden tea. No, it's an oxalate. [laughs] And, so that's really key.
[00:27:01] And then another thing that we really need to think about is, am I supplementing with the right probiotics? Should I be taking probiotics or should I let my food be my prebiotic and very gentle probiotic? And so, again, those fermented foods, the macrobiotic diet, way back when, before we really messed up our environment, and I really believe this, we turned the tide to tsunami starting eight years ago, I believe we just had a tipping point on the glyphosate and the industrialized farming, and we just crossed over. My first book, Cynthia, was full of oxalates and sulfur and chicken and beef, because we had not turned that tide that was written over a decade ago. Now it's no. And again, building back to protein, we've been told, eat 100 g of protein a day.
[00:27:50] You have to know your protein sources. It has to be clean. It has to be low amyloid. I'm a proponent of wild. I'm an example of wild. You know my age, [chuckles] and I don't do steroids, hormones. I don't even do hormone therapy. I just do wild. And because even absent the amyloid burden, when we eat wild game, we are increasing our omega-3 fatty acids and decreasing our omega-6 fatty acids. There's been a really big push against seed oils. I agree, they're destructive, and they're found in our animals and the animal meat, because when we feed them corn, the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 goes up. A happy bison has more omega-3 s than a farm raised salmon. So, meat isn't bad, it's just how we’re growing our meat.
[00:28:48] And if we're eating industrial raised farm chicken, beef, pork, or turkey, those are the non-wilds, you're effectively feeding not only an amyloid burden, but you're feeding an omega-6 burden, which is going to affect everything, the cell membrane structure, our brain, diabetes, which is, I believe, insulin and Mercola is really big on this [unintelligible 00:29:10] as is Dave Asprey. It just stabilizes insulin, which again, the mirror effect destabilizes it as well, because the pandemic has really affected insulin as did our protein affecting insulin metabolism, because when you can't break down our proteins, amino acid utilization, as it turns to glycolysis, which is how we manage sugar is disrupted.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:29:35] Now, I know one of the questions, if people are tuning into this podcast, they're thinking, what about pasture-raised animals or grass-fed beef or pastured chicken? Are those still a no or do you feel like there has been an evolution in the quality there versus food lot meat?
Teri Cochrane: [00:29:57] It's clearly better, however, know your farmer, because certain organizations have allowed definitions to be very diluted. So, a pasture-fed chicken could mean that 5 seconds of its life it was on a 2x4 piece of grass, and then it went back into its cage. And so, for beef regeneratively farmed animals are, I believe, almost as clean as wild. And again, if we start feeding the wild animals the way we fed the domesticated animals, we're going to be in the same soup down the road, so regenerative, then pasture fed, pasture finished, because if it's pasture fed, they can finish with corn. So, there goes that omega-6 instead of that omega-3, which is deleterious. And again, you don't know how long they were on that pasture, and then how much did they have to crowd. So, know your farmers.
[00:31:03] I always talk to farmers markets. I think they're really honest. Somebody told me last week, I said, “Do you spray your crops?” Not about animals. “Well, ma'am, I have to make a living.” So, I just said, “Thank you for your transparency.” And I walked away. Others are like, “Are you organic?” “No, but we do everything organic standard, which is, haven't been certified because we don't have the funding to do so.” So, it's really understanding where your food's coming from. Now, you're not going to be able to talk to your farmers every week. [laughs] But once you understand the sources and you can really find goods. Broken Arrow is a great source wild pork, they have [unintelligible 00:31:42] Vital Choice, I believe, for seafood. They're places to find better sources for sure.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:31:49] Yeah, there are some great farmers markets in Northern Virginia. I miss those quite a bit. It's a little more conservative down here. And they have their farmers market on a Tuesday from 10:00 AM to 02:00 PM. That's not always conducive with being able to get over to there. Now, if someone's listening and they're trying to navigate, making better choices, maybe it's a mom with younger kids. And certainly, I'm at the stage of life where my teenagers eat two meals for every meal because they're growing and they're very lean and athletic. Are there proteins that you feel like are more economical but can still embrace that kind of wildatarian philosophy?
Teri Cochrane: [00:32:28] That is a great question. So, one of the things that I espouse is food combining and not the traditional definition of food combining. So, let's assume that your ground bison is going to cost you $9.99 a pound. What I do is I'll take certain beans that are not fermentable, that are low lipotoxic, they don't have oxalates. So, white beans actually help with T-cell. [laughs] So, I'll take a ground bison, and I'll add beans. I just made this week a ground wild boar barbecue that I had, the great northern beans, I had tomatoes in there, zucchini in there. And so, what you do is you really stretch your price per pound, and by adding the beans, you're getting not a complete protein, but you're also getting protein. And then if you do the complementary amino acids, you're going to still get those high protein amounts.
[00:33:21] So, that is an amazing way to stretch your food dollar. Another way is to back to community experience is to share half a bison with someone if the price per pound goes way down. If you have four families sharing half a bison or a quarter bison, you can really find some economical ways to do that, and it becomes even cheaper than beef at some points.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:33:46] Yeah, I think it's so-- there's so many creative ways. When people ask those kinds of questions, I always look at it as a challenge. Certainly, we have a friend, a mutual friend that lives locally, and they have several head of cattle on their property. And when they go to process, as they call it, they process the animal, they’ll oftentimes give us a portion. And I was telling my husband, it’s unbelievable how much meat even you get from a quarter of animal. And so, I think that’s a really great way. And then you get creative because then you have cuts of meat maybe you’ve never worked with before, and it forces you to be creative and think outside the box beyond like ground meat and sirloin and maybe a filet. And I think that's certainly good on the learning curve.
[00:34:30] Now, one of the most common challenges that I find in women in middle age is dealing with weight loss resistance. And I know you talk about the dirty cupcake, I know you talk around this quite a bit, but I think it's a point worth revisiting because so many women, even women that are doing a lot of the right things, are so impacted as they navigate early perimenopause into late perimenopause and then eventually into post menopause.
Teri Cochrane: [00:34:58] So, weight loss resistance is a really big deal. 42% of the US population is considered obese. 42% of the US population is carrying two or more chronic conditions. So, we're in a health crisis and it's only going to be exacerbated. And what I will say is that the obesity is linked in ways that we've never looked at it before. It's not just about the sugar. I'm going to go into some things that I feel are very misunderstood or not understood at all. Again, back to that amino acid utilization. If you're eating the wrong proteins, you will not break down those proteins into amino acids. It takes 5300 amino acids to make one strand of muscle fiber.
[00:35:46] That means that your body has to take in that protein, it has to disassemble it and reassemble it into a very perfect chain of 5300 amino acids, so it can make one strand of muscle fiber. If not, it's going to fat. [laughs] So, consuming the right proteins, now insulin resistance has become a huge deal. But the pandemic changed the mechanisms of action, so, you could be insulin resistant because you have an iron overload. So, this is really novel what's happening, what I'm seeing with women, even vegetarian women are having iron overloads. Why? The pandemic turned on the hemochromatosis gene. It has turned on iron. Not only did it turn on those receptors, we over zinced because we were told that's the way to bind the spike protein. Zinc is antagonist to copper which modulates iron. And so what I'm telling women that are having problems with weight loss resistance, check your iron. We're telling women to phlebotomize quarterly.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:36:54] Wow.
Teri Cochrane: [00:36:55] Because iron burden is through the roof. And I'm asking women, as part of their checkups, ask for your iron, your ferritin, your TIBC. You're going to find, for the first time in my life, I had a high iron. I used to be always generally on that anemic side. Why is that important? Because iron converts to amyloids. Iron becomes oxidated, and it competes with mitochondrial function, which is cellular function, which is metabolic function, which goes to weight. So, you could be insulin resistant and weight resistance because of iron, because of histamine. Histamine's been tied to insulin resistance. Cholesterol, so, what's happening is histamine is competing with the LDL receptor. So, we're seeing people with LDL cholesterol going through the roof. We need cholesterol as women because it's a backbone of hormones.
[00:37:57] But when it's oxidated because of what's happening, the iron, the histamine, the amyloids, you're going to get weight resistance, and a statin isn't going to help you. You may need an antihistamine. You may need to lower your iron loads. You may need a little bit of bioavailable copper to manage that iron burden. You certainly need a low amyloid form of food to increase your amino acid utilization. That's there. And then you have the stress response. So, stress, as you noted, I call the dirty cupcake. Cortisol and adrenaline is the dirty cupcake. It is a hormone and it's a sugar. And what happens is when we become stressed, our body just thinks it had or ate a dirty cupcake. So, the body responds with an insulin response. Insulin is called the fat storage hormone. Insulin, not used, is stored. It's stored right around our middle.
[00:38:59] So, stress can make us bigger. Stress can feed that Candida to lead to estrogen dominance to manage thyroid dysfunction to make us bigger. Stress can disrupt our lymphatic system because the second role of lymph is fat metabolism. So, when you're oversecreting insulin, you're going to get fluffy and swell. [laughs] There are many reasons why there's a lot of weight resistance in this country. Sometimes, and you're an expert on this, and we've talked about this offline depth. Women need to intermittent fast very differently than men. If your window is too big, if you're in a certain part of your cycle, you may be going hypoglycemic, causing the dirty cupcake effect, because on the other end, if you're going hypoglycemic, your body's going to respond with cortisol or adrenaline to manage that blood sugar. So, you dirty cupcake yourself on the back end.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:40:10] Yeah. It's so interesting. I love that you're introducing some new connections that I would not have made. I do iron panels on everyone, and I'm oftentimes amazed at the extremes, people that are just chronically low iron and low ferritin and then people who are on the other end. And I saw a lot of hemochromatosis in cardiology and we would send patients for therapeutic removal of the blood. So, it's interesting they can be phlebotomized every three to four months depending on the individual. And they're very likely also seeing a hematologist at the same time just to cover our tracks. I think it's so interesting how much fasting can be both a strategy, but it can also be detrimental. And what I'm starting to see, and it's why I've started speaking more openly about this problem.
[00:41:02] As an example, people that overfast, they become weight loss resistant and so they think less food, more restriction, more exercise. And we talk about that stress piece that becomes hugely problematic for women. And I always say lovingly, we become less stress resilient. But there's a reason, mechanistically, this is happening. And so, if you're doing OMAD habitually and chronically, if you're doing these crazy 36, 48, six-day fasts, I tell everyone, if you understand mechanistically what’s happening, if you're already someone that’s on the thinner side, we don’t want to lose muscle, we want to be conscientious about it. Do you sometimes work with women that are at extremes? So, they’re having a strong desire to lose weight, but they’re putting things in their path that are compromising their ability to lose weight, like the over restriction of food, the negative pervasive thoughts.
[00:41:56] What do you typically do with women like this? I seem to be finding more of them, or they seem to be coming into my world and I’m referring them out to specialists because I feel like it is a bigger problem than what I like to handle within my business.
Teri Cochrane: [00:42:09] That's a really good question. And yes, I do work with a lot of that. And part of this is really and being, I believe an expert practitioner is, you have to also speak to the psychology of the individual, the emotional state of the individual. And so, with these women, what I try to start having them adapt is to move away slowly from an all or nothing into a something sometimes, and to move away from absolutes and labels. This is a naughty food. This is a bad food. This is a good food. In the psychology, this isn't a match for me right now. And, you know, our practice, Cynthia, what we do when we give food lists to people, we say yes, but we never say no. We leave it blank if it's just not now.
[00:42:57] It's a blank because we're leaving it open to the time where it will be a yes or a limit or a sometimes or during this time. So, the psychology is critical and I work in a lot of energy as well in quantum physics, and the thought creates the thing. Oh, my gosh, I have to restrict my eating or I'm going to be bigger. Well, that's what's going to happen. You're going to be bigger because the body in the neurolinguistic programming, what it hears is, “I'm going to be bigger.” And so, we really have to understand. And I work with clients at a very granular level, and the mind is so critical. Start with the mind. If the mind is not in a way that is open to giving itself compassion, to saying, how is it best for me?
[00:43:48] Not my neighbor, not my sister, not my best friend, but for me, and not to get caught in the dogma of these vast waves of what's hot at the moment. Kale used to be terrible, the biggest thing on the planet. I deemed it killer Kale years ago. Now Kale, all of a sudden, people are saying, “Well, let's not eat kale. It's a sponge for pesticides.” For me, it's sulfur and oxalate. So, we have these waves of what's in vogue, but we have to get back to what's right for me and what's right for me right now. And so, the underpinning of the way that I look at the world right now from a metabolic and from a health perspective, is matching your genetic blueprint to your current state of health, which is dynamic. It will change and so your needs will change.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:44:42] I love your perspective. It's always so well grounded and thoughtful and elevated. I would love to end the conversation today talking about, do you have any things that you're interested in or trends that you see coming, or things that, whether it's a supplement, a food, things that you are just more interested in, more vested in, working more with. Because most of the time when individuals are listening to this podcast, they're like, “What's the hot new supplement? Or what's the hot new food? Or what's the research that's causing you to stop and think,” like, “Oh, this might be something that is changing the narrative with my given patient population.”
Teri Cochrane: [00:45:25] So, one of the things that I'm really excited about is the technology of what's in the longevity space, very small, embryonic, like stem cells. Now, I call it the Tesla model. Right now, it's not available to the general public because it is so expensive, but I believe over time it will be democratized. I love the B cells because they're 100% matched, they're your own, and they have never been turned on. This is genius work of Dr. Todd Ovokaitys who is now speaking globally on this. Been the beneficiary of the stem cells. His average stem cells over six months will reduce your biological age by an average of four or six years. So, it's really remarkable. So, stem cells are a big thing, but something simpler.
[00:46:07] Really, the lymph has become such a big deal in terms of weight resistance, in terms of fluffiness, in terms of brain fog. And so, there's a Gua sha stone that you just use on the daily. And I will tell you, for me personally, it has been a game changer in terms of even bringing in more musculature, smoothing out the face, because we hold lymph and we hold fluffiness. I really love that. From a supplemental perspective, so methylene blue was the very first FDA-approved drug, and then it became over the counter. I'm hoping that it stays over the counter. Why is methylene blue so important when it's a broad-spectrum antiviral? It's also neurotrophic though, and so it's being even considered to be used in lieu of SSRIs.
[00:47:04] It is serotonergic, and it really helps to uplift the body in terms of what is important during the day for metabolic resilience. Serotonin spikes in the morning, we need high serotonin in the morning. We need melatonin at night. So, we can convert that serotonin, melatonin. Don't take serotonin at night. It'll be harder to convert. But what I love about that is it's, especially in this pandemic, again, making no claims, but it's broad spectrum, antipathogenic, and it's just an amazing studies. There's a lot of work with that. Vitamin C and coffee used with methylene blue seems to be more effective. I love that product.
[00:47:47] And then one of the ones which I really love, which is brand new in the market that I'm using in very different ways. I don't want to give away too much, but there's something called Heliocare, and it's called Fernblock, which is the registered trademark. And it is important to manage the melanocytes of the body. And so, because what this does is we are now knowing that, “Hey, guys, the technology of the future, like the stem cells, and then the wisdom of the past is get back into the sun.” Sunblock wasn't our thing. It's toxic in many ways. Get back into the sun in the morning to get that UVB and UVA rays because we need it not only for vitamin D and waking up, but actually, if you allow your gut to be exposed, you're actually repopulating your microbiota.
[00:48:40] But we don't want to get sunburned because sunburn induces histamine and then histamine grades that cascade that we just talked about, which will make you diabetic and heavy, believe it or not. So, I love this because it increases your melanocytes where you can go out and you actually don't burn. Now, I just went to Florida and I did not wear suntan lotion and my whole family got burnt and I didn't. I love it. And it really is just incredible. powerful. It reduces oxidative stress. It helps to increase the melanocytes. It helps you take on the sun with less impact. And we need our sun.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:49:17] Well, I always enjoy our conversation so much. Please let listeners know how to connect with you, how to work with you, how to get access to your book Wildatarian, which I love and have in my library.
Teri Cochrane: [00:49:28] Thank you. Well, I'm all-over social media @tericochranebeyondnutrition on Instagram, we've got TikTok, we've got Facebook. tericochrane.com is my website. My proprietary supplements are sold there The Wildatarian Diet: Living as Nature Intended is on Amazon. So, we're always here to continue being a disruptor in the space and always sharing that even in a space of confusion, truth is always truth. And so, it's just that it changes as what is the aperture of the truth that I can see now that is different than I saw even a week ago because things are ever unfolding.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:50:06] Well, thank you again for your contributions.
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