Josh (06:13.076) All right. Joining us today is a registered nutritional therapist and sports nutritionist, followed by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. His unique evidence-based approach to health utilizes functional medicine, preventative healthcare, and biohacking, as well as the laws of mother nature, nutritional therapy, and ancestral wisdom. Ryan Carter, welcome to the show.
Ryan (06:35.338) Thank you. What an introduction. Pleasure to be here.
Josh (06:38.64) I pride myself on my introductions. I really try to do my research. I'm no Bruce Buffer, but if I could scream and yell without getting sued for using his form, I would. But Ryan, walk me through, man, what got you to this career and to the place where you're now pulling in all these varied pieces of healthcare together in the way that you do?
Ryan (07:00.438) got me here was my own health issues. So you'll find that most people in the health space, some still have their health issues. That's not a surprise or shocker if you're in a scene and you understand things. But again, I had my own health issues and it was just asking questions about, okay, I don't accept that. I want to do something about it, become empowered. And that led me to
my job right now, which is a registered nutritional therapist, working with people around the world. Because again, I corrected my issues. And again, I didn't just stop there. That's what a lot of people do or practitioners do. They become the gut guru, which they had got issues with, and they sort of patched it up. And that's what their line of specialty is. So again, it's not just about the
It's about everything else. And again, when you get into the nitty-gritty stuff, it gets a bit more context and more hard to grasp and understand things. And again, a day of just like reading studies, you're like, well, did I actually really learn there? Did it actually solidify anything and make sense? Because at the end of the day, it's not as clear cut as most people say, i.e. e-prerotic
you get good gut health or take that probiotic here, you're going to get good gut results or whatever the issue is, or just take antimicrobials to clear out your gut, these pathogens doesn't really work like that. And again, the human body has evolved for thousands and hundreds of years. And again, the advancements in that we know and understand of it is very limited, especially the science that we applied. So again, even that evidence-based title that you gave me or said,
Again, I don't really like that. It's like an evidence informed view, but also utilizing ancestral components. Obviously not going to the extremes like, or ideology like liver King or people like that. But again, using the best of it, but also understanding the downfalls of it as well. Because again, we are not our ancestors. We had moral, we're different basically. We're in a different environment and we can't use everything that they use. But again, we can apply some wisdom. And essentially that's the missing.
Josh (08:57.376) Hmm.
Ryan (09:23.446) link and is what I really love to do is just adding wisdom to my clients or the knowledge that I acquire from learning. And again, implying it day in, day out with people around the world. And then obviously just supplying the snippets on social media basically.
Josh (09:42.378) So when you say ancestral wisdom or ancestral components that you apply to these health practices, what do you mean by that? And what do those look like?
Ryan (09:52.379) So it's like the, well it's just the understanding. What does that actually mean? What kind of mechanism of action is that? What is that suggesting or influencing part of our physiology? So again there's a gut researcher there called Jeff Leach who studied the Hasda and this is in Africa and again they live different lives to Western people and again he's done comparison studies looking at the Western gut.
and their guts and looking at antibiotic exposure. And again, he induced, or he used antibiotics in the Hastha tribe. And again, it didn't actually have the detrimental effects compared to the Westerners. So again, the belief that, okay, antibiotics are gonna typically wipe out your gut, it doesn't mean it's absolute or anything like that. So again, that's just taking an ancestral viewpoint, a bit of wisdom.
of just like one scenario, one situation, one bit of context. And again, that statement, okay, antibiotics are detrimental to your health and they should be avoided at all costs. And then realizing, okay, there's a bit more nuance in the game there. There might be a good time and place to actually intervene with an antibiotic. Not all antibiotics are created equally as well. So again, there's ones that actually have an effect on your mitochondria. There's ones that just actually just stay in the small intestine, that don't really go further than that.
Obviously once it's been metabolized. So again, it's just applying it and seeing the client, that person, that bit of wisdom. What does that mean for them?
Josh (11:31.284) Very interesting. So let me back up one more and ask you another question then. Your own health issues, that's sort of what got you in here in the first place. What were those health issues and what steps did you take to correct them?
Ryan (11:44.435) It was essentially mercury issues, so I'm consuming a large amount of bluefin tuna. It was mould exposure. Again, if you went in the functional medicine mould it was a few snips but weren't in my favour. But again, if you dive into it, most people have some sort of snip or snip issue. Again, it's not a sentence, it is what it is, but again it's the expression of that.
in the essence of our physiology, which is the problem.
Josh (12:14.912) And you're saying SNP is in like single-nucleopeptide like a genetic SNP. Okay. Right.
Ryan (12:18.506) Yeah, just a mutation, essentially. Again, it was a lack of understanding of what I know right now and what I practice and preach and what I share with my clients. So again, a big gap in my understanding of like health and wellness. So again, just doing the things that I would call out or wouldn't recommend to most people nowadays. So I was, I was doing that. So again, ignorance around circadian biology.
ignorance around light, i.e. wearing sunglasses, sun cream, all these factors. Again, that was really it. And again, I suppose there was probably maybe a gut pathogen or potential pathogen in the mix there. Again, is it really a pathogen or is it my internal system with the problem to that pathogen? Meaning again, are pathogens always bad or negative that we associate them with?
a certain degree. So again, I likely picked something up when I was in Tanzania and Zanzibar exploring, just going on the safari trip and I had a dreadful food poisoning experience there. And again, things weren't right from that experience. And again, I also done like some triple therapy, H. pylori clearance, which again, obviously in hindsight, I know there's actually
Ryan (13:45.586) Anyway, all these sort of experiences had a detrimental effect on my health and took me to a place where I felt like crap basically. My sense of reality was very poor. My quality of life was impaired. I couldn't get morning wood in the morning. I couldn't think straight. I felt like I was drunk, although I didn't drink alcohol. I'm sorry, I just fell off my chair. I lost the credible amount of weight as well. So again, that was actually a sort of disordered eating and...
Josh (14:08.365) Yeah.
Ryan (14:14.634) relationship with exercise I had as well where I basically went down to 55 kilos and like now I'm like 100 kilos so again a big loss of body weight and again the mental and emotional effects of that as well and again some emotional traumatic experiences prior to that which obviously has a role on our nervous system and imprints our physiology basically.
So again, just a few issues.
Josh (14:46.001) A couple of things, really is death by a thousand cuts in a lot of cases isn't it?
Ryan (14:49.77) Yeah, but I mean, you could probably make the case that, yeah, my mum was probably not the most healthiest. She had mercury fillings as well. I don't think she ate very well. I'm pretty sure she didn't eat seaweed or a lot of shellfish, as an example. But again, the icing on the cake that I was developed in our womb when we didn't have all these non-native EMFs and radiation around mobile phones, which is what now we're seeing in, I don't know, in the...
in teenagers right now and young children right now, we're seeing the effects of these come to fruition essentially, where maybe I think you're the same age as me. We were born in a generation of like maybe Gameboy was like in our teens the best thing ever, where now it's just like I don't even know what the devices are out there now, but again it's just like a different world and again that has consequences to our gut health or physiology as well.
Josh (15:36.361) Mm-hmm.
Josh (15:47.976) It's something that I talk about a lot, is getting into the sun. Now, I know during the 2020 pandemic, whatever view you decide to take on that one, for all of our listeners, it's highly politicized, but let's talk the science. They say, don't go outside, don't get fresh air, be inside, stick to your cohort. We're not getting exposed to pathogens, you're not boosting your immune system, you're not getting sunlight, which is vitamin D, which has so many benefits to the body, including immunity. The sun itself is antimicrobial. We're not doing these things to keep our immune systems up.
getting on touching the earth, getting outside, touching soil, earthing, grounding, all these very necessary things for our health. So what sort of things do you take into account on a day to day for your health? I mean, is it basics like food, nutrition, exercise, outdoors, are there other extracurricular steps you take? What does that look like?
Ryan (16:37.454) put myself and on the central be grounding literally every like all day all night grounding so again mechanism is it provides electrons is exactly the same thing as eating basically so again without them without grounding you'd basically need to offset that and that would mean you need to eat more to provide you with those electrons you're missing from the ground and again it would be soon as I wake up
doing some practice or being outside in the morning. And again, like you just said, sunlight's important. You mentioned the vitamin D story. But again, like vitamin D is only like 3%, 4% of the actual sunlight that actually hits the earth. What about the other 96%? So again, that has big biological role in our health, in our redox, in our charge. And again, that's influencing circadian rhythm. Again, but those would be the necessities.
They're like the fundamental building blocks, just like grounding and light. Again, light doesn't just purely give us energy as such. We need the raw ingredients. And again, like I said, it comes from grounding. It does come from food. So again, food does provide that and that'll probably be like the next step up. So ensuring that I'm eating a local seasonal diet, because again, that's the environment or bubble I'm in right now. And again, if I eat...
like a bubble from or an environment from another place, it's not gonna be synergistic to the environment I'm living in. Okay, but again, even that, there's some context with that. Like I'm in Nicaragua right now, there's pineapples, bananas, plantains, like avocados galore, but again, I'm still not really eating that because again, that's the premise of my heritage, my sort of genetics. And again,
the environment overrides that, but again, me eating a lot of these foods is probably going to have a more detrimental effect on me as an example, so you can too much sun exposure. So again, I don't want to have too much sun exposure because again, we know that can cause potential damage if I can't repair that action. So the whole point of sunlight or certain parts of the wavelengths is to induce damage.
Ryan (18:58.666) And it's up for our biology to sort of repair the process after that and get stronger. A bit like exercise. Exercise is important. But again, it's sort of like the icing on the cake. Okay, you shouldn't be in a, you shouldn't need to be in the gym every single day for an hour, two hours, and your whole life is around, based around it. Again, I think that's sort of the sword relationship with movement. Movement is the cherry on the cake. And again, ancestrally, it would have just been part and parcel of life.
It was a way how we collected food or hunted food, lifting up something to build our home or house or whatever it was, it was part and parcel of life. So we're basically replicating it with the gym as an example. And then it's turned on its head slightly with appearances as an example where girls nowadays are just basically inflating their bums with all these sort of glute exercises.
And again, that's okay. But again, what's the real purpose of that? Why would you want to do that? So again, that's basically putting energy into something and creating and changing mass with that. But again, what's the purpose? How does that really apply in the human body? Again, you can also make the same thing with like growing big biceps, as an example, what's the whole point of that? You're inflating your biceps. And again, that energy is going into your biceps where potentially it's getting displaced from your gut to repair it.
So again, it's just like understanding these concepts and how these apply and prioritizing them because there is a prioritization of what you should be focusing on, what's not really relevant, what are you really ready for, when to sort of do the resistance training, when are you gonna get the desired response for that? And again, it's all personalized. So again, whilst I do what I do,
Again, I wouldn't say everyone else should be doing that. So again, when I, when I say this is what I'm eating today, I'd always put like the, the sort of asterisk mark saying like, this is what I eat when I'm in Nicaragua. So again, when you listen to say, I'm a nutritionist and this is what I eat in a day, like it should be a big disclaimer where they say like, okay, but I also live there here and I have this going on and I have that blah, blah. Because again, it's not like for like, it's not an all sort of statement. Um,
Ryan (21:19.118) with the nutritional side of things. But again, the same principles with the grounding, the same principles with circadian rhythm, with light exposure or light hygiene, should always be applied to everyone on this earth, basically. Because all animals or wild animals apply that. Okay, so again, even an animal, a wild animal, here in Nicaragua would follow those principles. And again, the same wild animal in the UK, where I am from,
would also have privacy principles, their nutrition would be completely different. But yet they still wouldn't have health diseases, basically, because they have privacy principles, even with the variation of the diets, it doesn't really matter. That's why like nutritional science is a bit of a mess because again, it's so conflicted and literally no one really knows what a healthy diet is. Where all the, even like the funds that does go into nutritional science, which is still limited.
It's still not like a clear-cut thing. And again, the best message that most gurus do say is just eat single ingredient foods from whole foods. But that's like the clear-cut advice. But again, that's because it's just a mess and they don't really understand it.
Josh (22:32.192) Hmm. It sounds like a lot of the general approach is a lack of specificity, which covers a very broad spectrum, but doesn't really help anybody directly when we're dealing with this approach, which I think leads me to another question. There was some things you have mentioned about heritage and not eating so much of the avocados and things in Nicaragua because it's not where you're from. Do you believe in like a genetic heritage diet based on eating foods local to where you were born or where your family is ancestrally from?
Ryan (23:00.57) Yeah, I mean, again, I would say your environment, your environment and where you live in your environment, interact it, can modulate it. So I could, and again, I don't like using this word, but I could probably get away with eating more carbohydrates because I'm in the sun and I'm doing all these things and I have good health. Okay. Someone who has got maybe some, I don't know, if you want to label it, some dysbiosis, some small bacterial overgrowth,
or hyperthyroidism or whatever you want to give that clinical diagnosis. If they come here and again, they're being in a sun, they want to regenerate. They need to change how stem cells are working. They need to change their biology and think about regenerative factors. They need to, and again, they might have different permeability factors, the way that the gut is recycling or the cell cycle in the gut is working.
They need to do things differently than I would do. So they wouldn't be able to get away with it to a certain degree. In addition, like we just said, physical training is going to also influence that because again, we know it's one of the powerful ways of glucose, glucose disposal of holding glycogen within your muscle. But again, even then, do you need to eat glucose for your athletic performance or training? Again, I train pretty hard. I would say I'm very, very strong. I don't eat.
like what most people would prescribe. But because again, it doesn't make sense. I'm not an athlete. I'm just your average person who lifts something heavy a few times a week. But that's it. So again, it's understanding that because again, I don't want to place a lot of glycogen or utilize glucose in my system that much. Okay, because again, I know it's the sort of the keys to our biology. Okay. So again, although you can break it down and see carbohydrates,
Josh (24:30.036) Hmm.
Ryan (24:53.566) and fats, they produce different amounts of energy, but there's actually a different binary code within these foods basically. So again, there's a different signal that they're inducing. Again, there's a different change in the intracellular water that we produce when we break down these foods.
Josh (25:15.904) Hmm. That's an interesting science that I think needs more exploration. There's a lot of guys like Andrew Kaufman, he did a film called Terrain. Not sure if you've seen that, but kind of it goes over terrain theory. They talk about all kinds of stuff about our food, our environment, our water, the crystalline structure is what that all looks like and how it actually interacts with the body. And it's not a science that's well understood, but something I think needs more exploration.
Ryan (25:37.45) Well, I think Zach Bush talks a lot about that as well. And again, he's a good guy, promotes good stuff, like good stuff. And again, a lot of it is, is dialed down. So again, we produce water. So again, we reverse what plants do and plants is what cows eat. So technically you eat like your cows are vegans. Um, so you eat vegan meat basically, but again, everything is part of plants.
Josh (25:42.12) He does.
Ryan (26:05.638) In human body, we basically reverse that. So again, we do the opposite of what they do. They need water. We also make water at the end stage of that metabolism, basically, of cellular respiration. And that water is unique because again, it's surrounding all these sort of proteins, enzymes. Again, it's like when we see a textbook, it's just these sort of Cs, Hs, Os, Ns.
We're not seeing it surrounded in this sort of gel-like structure. Okay. And again, this is the essence of life because basically the human body is composed of water. We're a bag of water. And again, we hold a charge in this water. So again, that's the whole point of being outside or being grounded. Is you're adding charge into this water. You're electrifying it basically.
So that's the real key, essentially. And again, things, the electromagnetic fields are in our environment, the natural ones have a regulatory role in that. So again, sound has a role in that. So again, sound therapy can modulate the human body in the experience. So it can light. But again, food is stored light, basically. It's just the mass form of light. And again, we break that down.
That's one of the concepts in the microbiome. It helps us break that down. It helps us metabolize it. And again, the microbiome actually releases light. It also releases gases. So again, hydrogen, methane, hydrogen sulfide, and these are sort of gaseous transmitters. And again, these modulate our metabolism as well. Again, that can influence our body temperature.
it can influence the rate of oxidative phosphorylation, so our metabolism basically, hydrogen sulfide would influence that. But again, it's also a potential of repair processes. So again, it's like really key understanding that, but again, our overall health, our reflection, our overall status of our health and those components would actually, in my opinion, dictate our microbiome. Okay, so again, you won't have a healthy microbiome in a poor, unhealthy body.
Josh (28:22.656) course.
Ryan (28:22.89) But you'd literally have a healthy microbiome without too much work or, or issues or things to factor in like pre-biotics, probiotics, it would just take care of itself basically.
Josh (28:36.512) Hmm.
Ryan (28:38.066) Again, that's my thoughts of like how the microbiome is working. And again, there is some modern means of how we can obviously disrupt that with antibiotics, with consuming bromide, fluoride, which again, basically nuke the gut. There could be psychological stress, there could be radiation issues, there could be like amalgam fillings. There could be so many things that could disturb that. But in essence, if we boil it down.
our ancestors didn't have poor gut health. They don't have all these sort of modern diseases, but again, they did have good health. And of course, diagnostic tools do change. And again, we can make diagnostic claims and say, if one feels in this sort of spectrum now and just lead to that. But again, we never had these issues before, really to the extent that we have them right now. So something's massively changed. And again, it's massively changed.
from what you just said at the start with like obviously C19 comes into the picture. And again, that's a big red flag of how our physiology actually works based on the premise of grounding and the interaction of light on our skin and in our eyes.
Josh (29:51.584) Hmm.
Ryan (29:52.726) But, and again, sorry, a finishing thing, because it's basically influencing that reverse of the photosynthesis. It's influencing how we utilize oxygen. So again, your light environment would dictate your oxygen tension within your plasma, basically. And again, without oxygen, we can't produce energy. Without energy, we can't really do much. We can't produce that water. We can't produce carbon dioxide. We can't...
Josh (29:55.477) You're good.
Ryan (30:22.454) do anything and then we therefore go back in this sort of primitive metabolism, which is actually what the microbes use, essentially. Because again, they don't use oxidative phosphorylation, they're single celled. Us as a eukaryote, we're more complex. That's also why they replicate horizontally, I believe.
very fast. And again, that's why all your sort of antibacterial sprays that you see in like the kitchens or the bathroom is always not 99.9%. It's never 100% eradication, because of that mechanism of how they transfer their genes at a rapid rate, which they really are not that they you can't like, they just become resistant to what we try to do basically, only sunlight can actually
be that sort of agent to kill pathogens as such. And even then, we create our own sort of sunlight in our blood, like UVC light in our blood, basically, from the interaction of sunlight. So again, sunlight is the ultimate sort of antibacterial, antiviral, antimicrobial agent with how it works. But that said, it doesn't mean you, for example,
come down to Nicaragua and be outside in the sun, that you're creating what I just shared there or that you're doing what the textbook says of vitamin D synthesis. Because as you probably might know, there's a lot of people out there who do that sunlight exposure, yet their vitamin D is still in the toilet. Because again, it's a delicate process where there's a lot of context and factors influencing vitamin D physiology or what's really occurring on the skin with things such as sulfur, zinc, cholesterol.
liver metabolism, kidneys, all these sort of factors are influencing that marker that we like to track and measure. Because again, we are very measuring orientated species, we like data, but again, that doesn't mean it's always good either. Because again, a wild animal doesn't know its cholesterol levels or its glucose levels, it just lives, it bees. Again, humans are human beings as well.
Ryan (32:42.91) So again, I think it's a big part of the essence of again, like a world animal doesn't understand what I just said. It just does it basically.
Josh (32:52.884) It's a very primal way of being, but it really does show it the closer we get to nature, the further we seem to get from disease. Now a friend of mine made a joke as well. I mean there's malaria and all kinds of disease. I'm like, okay, like don't get that close to nature. But it does feel like the hobbits. Like the closer we get to danger, the farther we are from harm. It does feel that way sometimes. But if we can get ourselves back to nature, back to sunlight, back to organic, back to natural, a lot of these issues that we've accrued really start to undo themselves.
as light penetrates differently, as your body starts to produce better, more holistic byproducts. They start to produce less ash, we'll call it like a burning fire. It's a much cleaner fuel source. And all these byproducts don't have to get filtered. They don't junk up our filtration systems. Therefore our bodies can maintain healthy homeostasis. Which I suppose does lead me to the next question. What are some of the worst things that you see us doing in our modern day-to-day lives that you would say are junking up this natural
homeostasis is natural light and heat production process and detox processes.
Ryan (33:57.806) I mean, where do you want to start? I mean, I'll keep it really simple. But again, I would say the influence of artificial light, I mean, the constant effect of it, but more so at night time. Okay? And again, the mechanism more so at night time is based on how sort of we bound vitamin A in our body. And again, it's sort of loosely covalent, basically just means loosely bound. So again, we don't have much of a hold on it.
Josh (34:00.494) Hahaha.
Ryan (34:27.326) So it's sensitive and it's sensitive to blue light especially. And that blue light at nighttime is unbounding that vitamin A molecule and free vitamin A at a wrong time of day without its other sort of factors involving it, that is a big problem. Okay. So again, that is a big problem and it's essentially destroying certain compounds and molecules in our body, which leads us to again, that, that
conundrum of things like weight gain, brain fog, gut issues. Again, that's the essence of it. So again, artificial light, especially at night, is probably the biggest offender. And again, I would say also to the mix, just no understanding and believing that technology or EMF, Wi-Fi is safe or putting airports in between your head is safe because these companies say so.
And again, if you actually build down how they test these products, it's completely invalid. Completely invalid. And again, what we do to the data or the science or the research is just conflict it. So again, it's just like, okay, it doesn't really make sense. Yeah, there's no real negative effects for the majority. But again, we'd even manipulate that and pay for some positive studies, but we're just manipulate the data. So it doesn't really seem like it's the real thing either. But again,
We just have to be our own doctor and detective, essentially. Like I said, start asking questions. Well, again, it doesn't really make sense. Again, I would say like pseudo foods in general. Again, I wouldn't just put the blame on seed oils as an example. Seed oils go and lump into sort of the pseudo foods. So again, frankenfoods that are made by humans. Like we said, biggest conundrum is just...
eat single ingredient foods and depending where you are and how healthy you are on your journey would factor in, okay, do I need to limit some oxalate containing foods, lectin containing foods or histamine containing foods? Am I ready for essentially, sulfur to come into my gut or potentially do I have a SNP gene that influenced my metabolism of sulfur? So again, depending where you are, that would sort of dictate the sort of dietary...
Ryan (36:50.35) context, but again, in the whole, like avoiding the franken foods, which basically hydrate your metabolism, brain and fat, to basically just be a consumer. And again, we know that just loads your gut with problems basically. And again, that's breaching the barrier. And again, it's also indicative or in conjunctive, when do most people eat junk food? They eat junk food at nighttime, again, around artificial light. So again, it's a double whammy.
So again, by correcting your light environment, you're actually going to be this better placed with avoiding the junk foods essentially. Because again, you're likely going to be tired easier at nighttime. You likely want to go to bed. You likely have more dopamine levels to protect you from, okay, cool. I need to eat some sugar or some junk food at night to get me that high when naturally you just got it built in. So again, that's, that's the main thing. Again, you could throw things like
Josh (37:44.33) Mm-hmm.
Ryan (37:49.522) mouthwash, you can throw things like pesticides, all these sort of things into the mix. And again, they do add up. They're again, they're not just single entities. They're factoring this whole mix of problems that's hitting your gut, that's hitting your bloodstream, that's hitting your liver and driving the problems. Because again, it's never like one thing, it's never one root cause. It's factorial, it's multiple. And again, it's about your weakest link. Where is your weakest link?
Where did your mum have problems with her health? Again, was it a thyroid issue? Then we know that basically the development of you in the womb is gonna be slow. So across the board in tissues, which require high energy flux, you're gonna have weak links there basically. And again, that will typically be in the gut as an example, because it's got a high cell turnover, the same thing with the skin.
Ryan (38:47.537) So, those would be my biggest offenders.
Josh (38:52.444) I'm going to go back after this podcast is finished and listen to it again so I can absorb it twice. The information is fascinating and I think it's not well explored enough, particularly in modern medicine. We enter the world in a hospital filled with EMFs, filled with all kinds of junk. It's all sterilized. We have fluorescent lights. We have stark sterile walls and the doctors and everything's just so, the way we're brought into the world is so against how we've always been brought into the world.
right to the foods were fed right away as a kid, they got 160 some odd vaccines in the childhood vaccine schedule in the USA. Right away you're pricked in the foot as soon as you're born with this vitamin K, which got other junk in it as well. Then you're fed, they're trying to push people away from breastfeeding more to bottle feeding formula. Then kids are fed junk and snacks and food coloring and sugar and a non nutrient rich diet as they grow. Then they get to teenage years and they get into more fast food exploration and they're going out with their friends and doing other things.
from the very beginning or set up for a lifetime of failure, which creates all these diseases and these disease processes. And we see more and more artificializing of our lifestyles and diets as time goes on. And so I'd love to ask, these are all components that really create a very toxic environment for us to grow, which leads to disease.
But in your practice as a nutritionist, what are some of the most common diseases or sicknesses that you're seeing with the clients that you're working with? And what would you say are the easiest or most challenging ones to correct?
Ryan (40:28.898) I mean, most clients have some form of gut issue. So again, there'll be a scale with that. Um, but again, most people would have like some gut issue and then factoring that it would be on the lines of like multiple sclerosis, um, that'll be, and then again, pregnancy as well. So infertility and pregnancy. Well, same thing. So again, those would be the biggest.
factors, but again, I truly am more of a generalist. So I don't work or sell myself as a specialist in the gut or a specialist in detoxification or specialist in hormone, um, I don't know, regularity. Again, I don't believe in that because again, that's just what conventional medicine does. And functional medicine sort of follows suits where you have your gut guru or you have your, I don't know, whatever you want to label yourself as.
I don't believe that. I believe you have to have an understanding of the majority of things. And again, it might not be as deep dived as a specialist, but again, if you get that fundamental first principle understanding, you can connect with dots. And again, it's a bit like a puzzle, the human body, you can put the pieces of the puzzle together fairly easily. That's, that's my line of thought. So again, I never get like a majority client with... I don't know.
brain disorders or I don't know, muscle skeletal issues. It's just a whole bag of issues basically. And maybe that's the biggest thing that I see is that whole bag of issues where it's like migraines or where it's got issues or where it's like, I don't know, low estrogen or eminary, all these sort of issues. Again, it's a whole bag of issues and they're probably just getting bigger and bigger and the adverse effects are getting higher and higher.
Josh (42:26.492) It's really interesting that so many people have so many different illnesses. It typically starts with one or two and as the years go on, things break down. You know, these mechanisms of action in the body, these mechanisms of defense, as for example, you have gut issues. Now you're really inflamed and your body's trying to repair that, but you have a poor diet. So it will rob nutrients from your teeth or nutrients from other systems and other organs, which now leaves you with a different deficit. And all these bank accounts with these nutrients are now in the red. Everything's in
debt and these issues just pile up and pile up. And what do we do is we just throw medications on top and mask the symptoms and don't get really back to the root. And so your approach really sounds like you can hit a general approach because all things sort of come from the same place. All diseases or illnesses come from a similar area which is imbalance, nutrient deficiencies, lack of natural light, lack of all these basics. And you're relying on the body.
to create or to come back to its own homeostasis to level itself and heal itself. Would that be a fair summary of what it is you do?
Ryan (43:30.814) Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, it boils down to understanding, again, an atom, an element, a molecule, a macromolecule, an organelle, a cell, then a tissue, and then an organ, and then the actual organism basically. And then on top of that, maybe the environment.
And again, if you have to understand that, again, first principles, okay, what is the essence of an atom or the element that we're, that we maybe might be missing, okay. Or how it's, how it's not working correctly. Maybe that might be like the nitrogen, like nitrogen as an example, with its reactive species, or maybe it's the mishandling of oxygen. So understand the first principle of those. And then again, working way up, but again, understanding, okay, what's the actual tissue?
And how does that work in an integrated fashion within the system? They're then boiling it down still back to the cell level in that tissue, essentially, or within the organelle where it could be something to do with, I don't know, the melanin of that organelle within that cell, or even like, obviously the mitochondria or even like the lysosome or something to do with that.
Ryan (44:50.114) Again, it's really not. I think functional and conventional medicine make it out to be very tricky and complex, but once you truly understand first principles of health, it sort of all makes sense. And again, you can work your way back with that sort of evolutionary lens of understanding or going there, which when you don't get educated in like nutritionist school or.
that definitely not a doctor education about understanding how life was created on this planet. What does the human body, what do babies need for their regeneration? And again, that is the key when you can look at like longevity or reversal diseases, because again, a baby is thriving and it's growing. It's like, again, it's laying down tissue. Things are working very well.
Ryan (45:48.35) our cell vitality basically drops. So again, how do we correct that? We can look back and look at that situation or that life at that time and see what its key ingredients are, what's really homing in there.
Josh (46:07.7) So what do you think about stressors? You know, put some context to this. Obviously, stress is bad. Stress can be very harmful. There's youth stress and there's distress. Distress is emotional traumas or your boss screaming at you at work. Youth stress is like exercise and movement, those types of things. So obviously our stressors, say from 10,000 years ago versus today, are very different. Today it's modern stress, it's financial stress, it's work stress.
versus back then it's like finding and foraging food, running from bears, trying to build shelter. How do you think these different types of stressors impact our physiology today versus the different types of stressors we would have had back then?
Ryan (46:48.554) Yeah, massively. So again, back then we would have had acute short balance of stress or stress adaptions required. So again, stress is how we're here right now. Again, it's your tolerance to sunlight. It's your tolerance to polyphenol rich foods. So again, your stress response is individualized. So it's this stress, which is the problem. And again, it's the concept which you basically shared prior, which is like rubbing pizza to paypal.
So again, your response to a stressor requires energy, but organization to mount response, i.e. be able to run or pick something heavy or do something to get you out of a situation that requires energy. That energy has to come from somewhere. So again, people with fatigue or, I don't know, just like bed bound, they don't have an energy. So they can, they can't respond to stresses very well. And again, you have a sympathetic nervous system.
things like adrenaline nor adrenaline to turn on, to switch up. And again, in the irony here is that there's a system in our biology, which basically steals from our body to make those hormones come into gear because again, that's survival. We like, we don't care about making babies and having sex. We care about survival and surviving for today, for tomorrow, basically. So again, we would rob our future.
to get out of that hole and again our sympathetic nervous systems wire to do that and drop our vitality at an expense, drop our ability to make energy. Okay, so again we basically degrade our sort of quantum system at the expense of dealing with a stress response because again stress is not the problem but you basically need to regenerate and renovate that source of income essentially.
So that's what good health is doing. You're putting that money in a bank account. You're investing in it. You're renovating it to be able to handle a stress response. And again, that stress response is sort of coordinated from various routes. But again, our modern life is very stimulated with chronic, opposed to acute, no, sorry, a chronic low grade stressors all the time. A debt over our head.
Ryan (49:09.906) or a prick that who's in like in our classroom who's just like being a bully. Or I don't know, constantly listen to some biohacker or guru online telling us that everything we eat is toxic and there's plant defense chemicals everywhere. So again, this is a stressor. You might not be feeling it, but again, it's adding in, it's energy and information. And again, it has to get placed somewhere unless you're very good at in and out. Basically.
and you can decipher what holds into your body.
Ryan (49:45.866) And again, that has direct effects of a sympathetic activation on our gut health as an example. So very, everyone's very familiar with like leaky gut. But again, it can actually go leaky straight through the cell, which is dependent on these transporters called sodium glucose linked transporters. So again, when we're under stress, what do we want? We want energy, we want resources, we want sodium, we want glucose. So again, the people that say, okay, I have carb cravings, I have a high desire for sodium.
Basically what they're showing is that they are having a stress response, sympathetic activation, their gut lining is opening up within the cells and trying to grab contents in. And the issue with that, it grabs the contents, but it also grabs the things that we call endotoxins or lipoprotein saccharides. And again, that causes an event which basically influences some cytokines or tol-like receptors basically within our cells.
Mayday, brain shuts down, physiology shuts down. Again, you can pin that back to like, phyrophysiology, blah, all these sort of processes, which we don't need to get into. And again, that's making you sort of depressed, staying indoors, staying in bed, not feeling well. And again, it's called like sickness syndrome essentially, which is induced from this stress response. And again, your tolerance to that gets lower and lower and lower. You get more fragile and fragile and fragile.
a bit like adrenal fatigue, it's not really like the fatigue, it's the resistance to this sort of signal essentially. And you become weaker and weaker to sort of these stresses. So again, that's where the stress is very individualized. Okay. So again, someone might be very stressed doing this podcast, talking to someone. Again, someone might be thriving at it because they're used to it, where again, the adrenaline is a positive thing.
where it's not going to be a negative thing and it's not going to open up my gut lining where Maybe an hour later. I need to urinate like a crazy person
Ryan (51:50.058) And again, I think in our modern world, we go a bit too extreme where we think like more is always better, more exercise is better. Well, again, exercise does the same thing. It opens up your gut lining. Again, not a lot of people talk about that. It changes how oxygen works. It changes your blood flow, hitting your gut and the mesoteric artery. So again, you actually are inducing, if you're doing it crazy, you're going to induce things like what we would call dysbiosis.
And again, it's more apparent in females. Females' tolerance to endotoxins is more sensitive, and it's done that from an evolutionary premise, because again, they are the holders of our future. They are bringing future life forms into this planet, and again, their body doesn't want to do so when there's theft occurring in the body, basically, or the signals of endotoxins are coming in. They're not going to...
have a healthy cycle as an example. So again, physical exercise can do that. Radiation can induce that. Heavy metals can induce that. So again, we get the opening of the lining, and all hell basically breaks in. And again, it doesn't matter if you got pristine gut health or you do a stool test and it shows you that you got no dysbiosis markers to your body. Bacteria in your bloodstream is bacteria in your bloodstream, which is sepsis.
Ryan (53:17.427) That's the crux of it essentially. And again, there's things that you can support yourself with. Again, like first principles, not doing the things that I just shared. But also we know that when you do eat plant contents, when you do eat some fiber, it has a beneficial effect of taking out those endotoxins. Because again, being more constipated, slower transit time, is again associated with problems. There's more potential of things
going bad when there's more context. Again, it's a bit like having elevated cholesterol in your blood or LDL particles in your blood. Again, there's a lot of context there, but in theory you got more lipoproteins there, you got more cholesterol in there. There's more potential of it being oxidized. So again, it's the same thing. More fermentation, more excess bacteria in the wrong place at the wrong time, more likelihood of endotoxins being a problem.
Josh (54:16.16) So all this information can be really easy to find once you're at a certain level in medicine or in practice, you really start to see a lot of the same patterns over and over. And that's really for our listeners, that's basically what we call symptomatology. You can identify symptoms, figure out where it's coming from and know what's wrong just based on the symptoms alone. But in your practice, Ryan, do you use any sort of testing? Do you do any kind of blood labs, any sort of GI mapping or any kind of clinical lab testing that you use as part...
of your toolbox to get your clients back to the optimal health.
Ryan (54:52.194) Me from the get-go, not really. So example today is I'm writing the summary notes of a initial consultation from last week and the client presented with a lot of issues. She's got a lot of history of doing functional and conventional testing. So again, that's with a Cyrix and Array 7. So again, that's looking at what we're talking about with myelin sheaths with multiple sclerosis. They've got the organic acid test. They've got the micro toxin profile. They got Dutch test.
They haven't got stool test, but they got some full blood counts and stuff like that. So again, that's fairly recent. So again, and they've worked with several practitioners as well. I don't need to test them anymore with how I do my onboarding with my clients and all those tests, that's more than enough information. I know what I need to be doing. And again, me needing like new tests to show something called to prove a point. Again, it's going to cost money. And again, like.
I'm not the most cheapest practitioner out there. But again, the reason why is I don't do stupid or ridiculous testing. So again, to prove a point or to inflate my ego to be like correct to see on a lap. And again, even the people that I know who sort of in the same wavelength as me, practitioners out there, again, I actually don't hold weight in much of the testing, especially the functional testing.
as much as I used to. And again, I'll be dependent on like, again, the health of your kidneys that would radically change the insights of organic acid tests, even on my co-toxin test, it can be radically changed from provocation as an example of dietary contents over the last few days. So again, the goods, but again, it's not the center of my practice. What I like to do is
Again, use actual blood chemistry. I am a big fan of using blood tests because blood doesn't lie. And again, it's more to do with physiology or where you are on like pathophysiology as well. But again, there's a lot of data in there, which I do think functional practitioners don't understand because unfortunately the education around that is lacking where they're educated by functional medicine test providers to support their tests and their range of supplements.
Ryan (57:11.702) which again, maybe has a time and place. But again, it's, it's not understanding the blood, which like things like B12, your red blood cell profile with MCV, with red cell distribution width, with platelets, um, the LDL and HDL numbers, looking how charged your body is, um, it does say a lot and again, I don't think people have got the expertise in understanding that, so I like to have that, not always, but again, depending on their budget.
And then potentially say three or four months down the line, when we're actually moving the needle, that's likely when I'd look into an organic acid test. Because that provides me with more clear insights and a fairer chance of seeing a clean test result of what their body and mitochondria is really expressing and sharing basically to me on this test.
Because again, that's the whole point of an organic acid test, is actually to look at your metabolites of your metabolism. So again, when I've actually done the foundational stuff, applied all the personal nutrition and all these kind of stuff that I work with, that's when I'd be in favor of organic acid test. Or again, it might be something to do with the thyroid antibodies, or it might be something to do with maybe let's look at a stool test now. Maybe you're actually taking dumps every single day and it's the right...
form on the base of the Bristol stool chart that, and the fibroid activities working now, we can actually see if they're okay, cool. Have they got the ability to shit out as an example parasites? Will we see a fair reflection in their stool now, opposed to that parasite locking up and staying put? Because again, a parasite doesn't want to be leaving your body. So again, even stool tests are a bit murky in my opinion as well. So again, there's a time and place for them.
Again, it's dependent on the client with their budget. And again, how much trust that they have in me with my history and how I do things to sort of guide them and say, yep, here's the right thing to be doing. This is probably the best time to be doing that. And again, no, we don't want to be doing all these things to do with mycotoxins, to look at like antideretic hormone or alpha melanite stimulating hormone or VIP. There's no need to do that. We don't need to do that yet. We know you basically been in a mold-infested place. Why do we need to spend?
Ryan (59:34.058) 2000 pounds on these, $2,000 on these testing. It's crazy because again, it's shiny. It's a new tool. Um, again, I get it. People like to see data, but again, it comes back to me to sort of distill and empower it. We're human being. We are not always data driven. We have emotions and feelings. We can change our physiology with thoughts alone. I can believe that this, I don't know, this was a coffee.
Josh (59:37.621) Mm.
Ryan (01:00:03.99) This contained 500 calories or I can believe it contains zero calories. That thought is a hormonal secretion and it changes my physiology with things such as ghrelin, which should basically make me feel satiated with me thinking this is 500 calories when basically it's like zero. So again, we can change our physiology with thoughts alone. So again, it's me to distill that, empower them to know that they can change their biology just with thought.
but with what we're doing in a rational, critical thinking.
full toolbox viewpoint of health basically or 360 approach, not discrediting functional medicine, not discrediting conventional medicine, but using it all in one complex integrated system, which I would call decentralized health optimization medicine and help the client. So again, to achieve their goals, nothing to do with me for them, not me.
Josh (01:01:06.188) I love that. I think that's a brilliant approach to medicine and it's much more ancestral. It's much more functional and practical in a sense where we don't rely on modern medicine to be healthy. The modern approach to health is that we need pills. We need pharmaceuticals to maintain a baseline of health. That's the idea that we see being pushed, but it's so far from the truth. Humans would never have existed all these years if we relied on pharmaceuticals to maintain health.
Ryan (01:01:32.718) I mean, I'd apply that question back to you. Don't you think the same thing applies with functional medicine? And maybe people in your field have got health with prebiotic fibers, probiotics, all these sort of modulators as well. Don't you think the same thing applies?
Josh (01:01:49.852) I think it's interesting because I think there's a time and a place given the dire, the circumstances, like modern medicine, if somebody comes in with a massive infection that we can't just get down with, if they're septic, for example, right, we need antibiotics, like we're talking about earlier, there's a time and a place. And in that, I think there's a time and a place for some of these modern conveniences, we'll say, using particular strains of bacteria and probiotics to combat.
For example, if I get women in my practice, I specialize, I work with a lot of gut disease is what I really do. And so as we're doing some of these detox protocols, we're cleaning out the system and getting their, you know, phase one, two, three liver detox pathways open. Some of the things we often see is very common, especially for women to get UTIs. And so what we can use then is particular strains. Like there's a great one that I use from Metagenics called Ultra Flora Women's. Now I'm not sponsored by them, but I think it's a great product, credit where it's due.
but it's got two bacterial strains, lactobacillus, rhamnosus, and reuteri, which are native to the vagina. And so if you actually use them in a UTI, and I've also had clients apply it with a yeast infection on a tampon with say coconut oil, and you crack open this capsule probiotic and put it on, insert, leave it overnight. Oftentimes that UTI or yeast infection is gone by the morning. So I think there are some niceties with these modern conveniences. When it comes to like probiotic and prebiotic fibers and all these supplements,
If we truly have been from the beginning, getting them from food in nature and these normal natural sources, I think we'd be perfectly fine. But I think now, many of us, billions of us are at a stage where undoing all the damage of all these decades of modern life, where we're almost required to use a lot of these modern vices or devices to get us back to a state where we can just maintain.
Ryan (01:03:37.206) Yeah. Again, I definitely agree with you in situations and in conditions, begging to give it out to the masses or promote it to the masses without applying that context. I think that's where the issue applies. Or just believe that everyone is nutritionally deficient in, I don't know, B5 or B2. When in theory, yeah. Or again, like our ancestors probably never ate as nutrient dense as we could probably could today.
Josh (01:03:50.27) I agree.
Josh (01:03:56.9) arbitrarily deficient yet.
Ryan (01:04:05.93) Meaning that if we wanted to, we could eat extremely nutrient dense, but we could still potentially have some health issues. Now we might correct some imbalances, but we can still have health issues because it's not the crux of the issue with how health and physiology works per se, just from dietary nutrients alone. So again, like things that we just said there, like those would be like water soluble vitamins. And again, if you're not holding water well inside your cell, what do you think happens to these B vitamins?
Exactly. Or again, if your mitochondria enzymes are not working well, or your utilization of oxygen is not working well, or again, even looking into the pH and like you very well know is like the pH actually controls the environment of the microbiome. Again, how well your bile acids, your primary ones affecting your gut microbiome. And again, that's also the case with things such as in the vagina, which again, the pH is indicative of what microbiome is going to be faced there.
And again, that's given to like the lactobacillus that you just mentioned there. So again, the pH is going to be indicative of hydrogen, which is the potential of hydrogen, which again comes down to like oxygen tensions within the cell and its sort of metabolism. So again, all these sort of variables. And again, it's an interesting one with the tampon using coconut oil. Because again, I actually was reading that with the HPV virus recently.
And again, applying coconut oil with some iodine. And again, the actual study will use cryotherapy as well on the vagina, uh, some way on the mucosal line of the vagina. And again, it basically got eradicated. Um, so again, that gives you just the power of just like iodine and some topical coconut oil using a tampon as a means of delivery, um, and again, some cold therapy, which I probably wouldn't recommend most people to be doing, but again, that just shows you the power of like iodine is a...
is a nutrient as well that the body needs in our modern world, basically disregards it, especially our diet. And even the paleo diet or animal based diet doesn't consume enough iodine in my opinion. And again, iodine is one of the most powerful antimicrobials out there as well, which has a pro-oxidant effect essentially, but also an anti-inflammatory effect, but again, it's actually the
Ryan (01:06:27.902) one of the main reasons why humans are the most advanced mammals on this planet, a tie into why I consume a lot of seafood as well and how our brains essentially evolved. But again, I don't want to go too deep in that, but again, it's just, we do have the power and we do have food at our disposal to really change the game. And again, I just don't think it's always about more, more supplements or higher, higher doses of supplements and automatically presuming.
it's going to change the game as such. And again, that would be with probiotics or fiber. More fiber is not always the answer as well in some cases, as you're probably well aware.
Josh (01:07:07.316) Mm-hmm. No, absolutely. Everything's got to be contextual. I think the second we blanket any form of healthcare and say everybody should do this, then we're completely in the wrong. Everything, I believe in individualized medicine, but I also believe in the basics of physiology and ancestry and our original design. That's the only blanket is that we all have blood, we all breathe, we all need sunlight, we all need to ground, we all need oxygen. Those are the basics. But outside of that, you know,
21 different types of diets to my clients based on their GI profiles, their own dietary needs and all kinds of different stuff, just on a microbial level, looking at bacteria and nothing else. So there's a lot of individuality. But on that note, I realize we're actually a fair bit over time, Ryan. I could spend all day talking to you, man. I find your knowledge base absolutely fascinating. And it's something that I think needs more exploration. And I'd love to have you back at some point to dive a little bit further into some of these topics.
But before we wrap up, I have one question I'd like to ask and it's my favorite question. Is there anything we haven't talked about yet or anything you'd like to mention before we start wrapping up?
Ryan (01:08:18.69) No, I think we covered a lot of ground. Maybe part two. Maybe your listeners can ask some questions and we can dive into that as well or their thoughts and we can discuss that further. But again, I look forward to part two.
Josh (01:08:33.872) Likewise, it's going to be a blast. There's so much to dive into here and I'm going to go back through this entire episode, review, make a bunch of notes. I'm going to have a book full of questions for you because I'm sure the listeners will too.
Ryan (01:08:46.403) I'll be prepared for that. I'll make sure I have a good night's sleep and get plenty of sun the previous day.
Josh (01:08:52.02) Well Ryan, thanks so much for your time and your expertise man, it's been a blast.
Ryan (01:08:56.206) You're welcome. Thank you.