Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Simplicity: A Path to Health & Truth
Have you ever noticed how the modern pursuit of health has become overwhelmingly complex? From contradictory medical advice to endless supplement options and diet trends, we're drowning in information while chronic illness rates continue to rise.
The Healthy Living Podcast tackles this paradox head-on with a refreshingly honest perspective on finding clarity amidst health confusion. Drawing from personal experience battling cancer, host Joe Grumbine shares profound insights about the pitfalls of health misinformation and the dangers of accepting oversimplified cause-and-effect relationships. "If you don't look for your truth," he warns, "you could miss it and it could have fatal consequences."
This episode explores how our modern environment—with processed foods, constant digital stimulation, and fragmented attention—creates barriers to hearing what our bodies are trying to tell us. Joe offers practical approaches to cutting through complexity, from strategic fasting and food elimination protocols to creating quiet space for intuition to emerge. The conversation delves into why vacation feels so restorative (hint: it's about simplification), how multitasking undermines health awareness, and why meaningful relationships matter more than social validation.
Whether you're facing health challenges or simply feeling overwhelmed by contradictory wellness advice, this episode provides a roadmap back to clarity through simplification. You'll discover how creating space—physically, mentally, and emotionally—might be the most powerful healing tool available to you. Join our growing healing community where finding good answers doesn't require wealth or special access—just the courage to listen to that "still small voice" that knows what your body truly needs.
Share your experiences with simplification or ask questions about your own health journey! How has complexity affected your wellness path, and what simple changes have made the biggest difference?
Intro for podcast
https://www.wcsblog.com/podcast-episodes
Hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and today we're going to continue our quest for the truth regarding health and healthy lifestyle and building a healthy community. And today we're. We live in a very complicated world right now and information and people and everything about our world is complex and at the same time, you know people are living longer than they've lived in all history really, and you think about that and you say, ok, well, what is what? And unfortunately, many people most people, I think draw conclusions without looking at all the facts, all the facts. And when you're trying to find facts, the more complicated a situation is, the more difficult it is to solve. They still don't understand the human body in many, many, many ways. They don't understand cancer, they don't understand the brain. They're learning more and more things, but the truth is, as science is discovering itself, it's wrong. Most of the time it's wrong more than it's right, or it's right about a thing, and then they come to realize well, there's these other things. And you know, in working with cannabis medicine for so long, I've always said we're never going to know these answers entirely because you can't prove it. Said we're never going to know these answers entirely, because you can't prove it. You know you have a plant that has hundreds of compounds and we have people making these claims well, this does this and this does that. And you don't know. You just don't know. You can, you can isolate a compound and say, well, this by itself does this. Okay, you can make some discoveries. That way, you can prove some things, you can demonstrate systems and you can demonstrate mechanics of things. But the second you have two or three things or hundreds of things involved. There is no way to know what is causing what. Maybe these 14 things put together in this one way cause this other thing to behave differently. Well, it happens all the time. And yet you have people touting why this Because it does this, and by that because it does that. And I say you know what? Try this and see what it does for you, and if it's safe, then so be it.
Speaker 1:But the problem is a lot of misinformation comes because of things being complicated all the way to relationships, if you think about it our diet, the electronics in our life, the communication, just information, straight up. You know it used to be. Where did you get information from? Back in the old days, somebody would tell you a thing I heard from somebody, or a song, or you know, somebody traveled along with the news from the town before, and then that turned into. You know, all of a sudden they're printing paper and then somebody could write something down and then you could pass that around and then, you know, the sound starts traveling and all of a sudden people can transmit sound and telegraphs. And then that goes to where it is today, where information is ubiquitous. There's no getting away from it. And as well as that is amazing and good, it also makes things complicated and it creates a place for misinformation and confusion to happen, maybe more than ever. And so well, knowledge is increasing at expanding rates. It's also disseminating misinformation. And so now we live in this world where you know, you talk to 20 people and they're going to tell you every side of a thing and say, well, science says this and this and this, and the other person is going to turn around and say, no, the exact opposite is true.
Speaker 1:Cell carcinoma. I went from thinking I knew something about cancer and how it works to finding out I have cancer, to being told by people everything you can imagine from. Well, cancer is a virus, cancer is a parasite cancer. Is this cancer? Is that? Well, you can just do this, you can do that and all the different things people have told me. Holy shit, if you could just put yourself into my spot as somebody seeking truth and considering everybody's input and then getting hit with every possible thing good and bad, could be possibly true or not and I got stuck in a spot where I'm like, well, I got to start figuring this out for myself, and so I started isolating things and trying one thing and trying another thing, and looking at at statistics and looking at at uh, you know, talking to people who have dealt with it and unfortunately, you find out again. Somebody discovered a thing and unfortunately, you find out again, somebody discovered a thing and they attribute it to a thing. So, for example, lots of people that I've run into well, you can remove tumors just by eating this fruit. Okay, so let's stop and think about that.
Speaker 1:Somebody has a tumor and they are going through their life trying to solve it and they find this fruit and they start eating it. And then, in addition, what else are they doing? Are they eating other shit food? Are they eating a bunch of meat and dairy? Are they living a stressful life? Are they subjecting themselves to toxins? Are they in a place with parasites? There are all these things right. But they're eating this fruit and all of a sudden the tumor starts going away. So they're like, oh well, the fruit must have caused it. And so then they go around selling fruit and they're like, oh well, the fruit must have caused it. And so then they go around selling fruit and they're like, look at this fruit, it'll cure your cancer. And you know, the truth is, unfortunately there will be somebody, I guarantee you, that's going to believe this person and their fruit and they're going to not go on their own quest to find their own truth and they're going to end up dying because they believe this poor bastard and their fruit. And I'm not saying that the fruit isn't the answer for this one person. I'm saying there are not blanket answers for people and if you don't look for your truth, you could miss it and it could have fatal consequences.
Speaker 1:So let's start looking at these things, the simplicity of things. And how do you? You know? Look at the diets. People used to die of food-borne illnesses. They used to die of starvation a lot more than they do today. Water-borne illnesses Okay, so you say to yourself well, the food today must be better than the food of older times.
Speaker 1:Well, is that true or not? Look at the food we eat today. It's complicated. And look at the food people ate in older times. It was simple. But what's the difference?
Speaker 1:Well, we know about hygiene, we know about cleaning food. We know about eating bad food. We know about hygiene, we know about cleaning food, we know about eating bad food. We know about bacteria, fungus, disease, parasites and all these things. Back then they ate what they could because there wasn't anything else to choose from. Today, we have abundant cheap shit food all over the place and it's actually pretty hard to find good, clean, simple food. But what's happening? You know, people are obese now. There wasn't a lot of obese people back in the old days. You know why? Because there wasn't a lot of food. Well, there probably wasn't a lot of diabetes and there wasn't a lot of the same problems that we have today.
Speaker 1:So you know, let's get down to simplifying things. You know we've talked about fasting. We've talked about fasting. We've talked about reducing things. We talk about simplifying things.
Speaker 1:So one of the simplest things to do if you want to find some answers is start at your diet and maybe start with a fast Start, with a three-day water fast, and say, okay, let's reset and let's start with zero. And then, if you want to figure out, maybe, what's causing your problem, you start a very simple diet. Maybe you start with just a juice and you say, well, how do I do with that? And then maybe you introduce some fruits and vegetables and you say, how do I do with that? And then maybe you introduce some fruits and vegetables and you say, how do I do with that? And then you start introducing things and seeing how you do and all of a sudden you may find, as you introduce a food into your diet, whoa, I'm feeling weird. Well, that's how you can start to isolate things. You can start to find your answers. You can also do complicated genetic tests and find out. Yeah, that's true, but who gets to do that? The people that can afford it. And so we're looking for simple truths. We're looking for truths that can apply across the board and by simply reducing the things that you eat and looking at how they act.
Speaker 1:So, for example, when I was younger, I was full of allergies and initially they were trying to find out. You know what's wrong? Why do you always have a stuffy nose, post-nasal drip, asthma, bronchitis and the allergist at the time says well, try eliminating milk and chocolate. I think it was, and so we did. And, sure enough, my nose cleared up some, and so we assumed from that that, you know, I had sensitivities and we went through a couple of different foods and some of them seemed to reduce my stuffiness and others didn't, but milk definitely. I'd learned that when I drink milk or eat dairy more, I'll have more mucus. Okay, I think I could make an assumption based on that. And you know, and today it seems like everybody's got these giant food sensitivities. But why is that? Are we, are we eating the foods that we used to? No, we're not.
Speaker 1:Foods today are processed in ways that they never were and in some cases that's supposed to be for our health. You know pasteurization and irradiation and some of these things they do are to kill pathogens and are supposed to make food more stable and be cleaner, but at the same time they're rendering them, they're changing them. Every time you run food through a process it's more complicated, number one, and it takes things apart, it changes them. And I have this to say as I'm going through this journey. In healing myself from cancer, my diet was the most significant thing that had to change. I have a very simple diet now. I lost another 30 pounds from where I was. I'm way too thin right now, but it's in my benefit, as I'm fighting these tumor cells, to not have additional weight and have additional nutrients in my body right now. So we're balancing this very carefully.
Speaker 1:But I also know that the food that I eat right now is very clean and very direct to source. So when it comes to processing, I don't have any processed food right now. If anything, it's warmed, maybe boiled a little bit, but things are not. You know there's not multiple ingredients in my food. If you look at any package of any food or any recipe of anything, you're not going to find anything less than a dozen ingredients, and you're going to find ingredients that you don't know what they are, you don't know what they do and you don't know how they're affecting your complicated chemistry.
Speaker 1:So, as we're getting looking for answers and you say to yourself well, you've got to listen to your body. You know, if you're going to listen to doctors, you think about what are you doing, and I'm not saying don't listen to doctors. Doctors are like anybody. They have a large body of knowledge and they practice, and they know things because they practice. So certainly they can have answers that can help you.
Speaker 1:But do they know you? Do they know your complicated chemistry? Do they know your history? Do they know the details? Do they even care? Are they going to bother to ask? And that's something you got to pay attention to. If somebody is going to give you an answer based on limited information, how good is that answer likely to be? How does that work right? And why are doctors wrong so much? You know, why do doctors make fatal errors?
Speaker 1:Why do doctors prescribe and prescribe and prescribe drugs that don't cure but cover up symptoms more than anything? And you, you know everybody's on these drug cocktails and and even they're trying to do this to me with potential therapies and before I've even started therapy, I've got 12 prescriptions. Well, I haven't taken any of them, except for a couple of supplements, because I know that this cascade of of prescriptions becomes untenable, and then people you know spend a lifetime trying to undo them. You don't realize how complicated things are. So you know, there's a quote out of the Bible that you know God speaks to you in a still small voice, and I think that there's a lot of power in that.
Speaker 1:And as I'm going through this journey and seeking truth, I've learned that quieting myself and listening to my body, simplifying things to the point where I can tell when something changes, paying attention to the simple things like bowel movements and and urinating and uminating, and the moisture in your mouth and how you breathe, and pain levels, stress levels, things like that. When you're living a busy life, you can't possibly notice these things. When you get up and you're thinking of a hundred things and people are calling you, texting you, emailing you, and then you've got radios and TVs and podcasts and all these things that are just bombarding you and you don't have time to sit with any of them and really absorb. Well, what are you going to notice? How are you going to hear a still small voice in a crowded room where everybody's talking? So I think it's imperative.
Speaker 1:I know, as I'm walking down this journey, I've spent a lot of time with different plant medicines. I've spent time with people who have worked on me with energy, and what happens when that happens is you sit quietly, and I've spent a lot of time in a meditative state, even when I can't sleep because of pain, I'll just sit there and sit with it and try to experience what I'm experiencing and try to feel what's happening. And it's interesting. I can tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I have a better connection to my body and to my intuition now than I ever have before. And, looking back, I can see that in the rare cases when I did listen to my intuition, it guided me well, intuition, it guided me well. And so you think to yourself, some people have really strong intuitions and they'll go through life with a feeling and they act on a feeling and and in some cases it can be very beneficial other times, you know, feelings end up being emotions and people make a lot of poor choices because they act on feelings.
Speaker 1:But I think that as I'm going through this, I, I, I'm regulating my metabolism with diet and fasting and literally I've come to a place and it doesn't make me anything. It just means I'm listening to my body and as I'm going with a goal of upregulating or downregulating or modulating my fuel sources, from glucose to fats, ketones, trying to avoid breaking down my own muscle tissue and coming right up to the line of that I've been able to realize. There's even times when I was like, okay, you can have two macadamia nets and that'll get you through. I'm like, whoa, where did I get that thought Right? Where would you get that from? Except for if you're communicating, you're communicating with yourselves in some way. I don't know how it works. I just know that as we simplify things, I think we find more answers, and I think that in fasting, sometimes thinking about taking time off of electronics, turning the TV off, just spending time and having a conversation with people, spending time by yourself thinking about something, or sitting down and reading or listening to a book only not having 12 things happening at once.
Speaker 1:People talk about multitasking as a good thing. It's one of the worst things you can do, and we live this life just full of multiple, multiple windows open in our lives and and you know how can you get answers out of that consider relationships and starting to be honest about them. You know we, where people have this, need to be validated and to be liked and to be listened to, and so we go to places like social media and we get bombarded with information and opinions and it creates more tension than it does community in so many ways, and yet you can find community there. But just imagine having one person that would balance the bar that you hold relationships to and have one person who actually listens to you, actually one person who wants good for you, who smiles when you do well and cries when you're in pain, who invites you to their house and shares a meal with you, who never talks bad about you or would stand up behind your back or who would do something for you that you wouldn't maybe do for yourself. Those are real relationships and people.
Speaker 1:And then you think about everything else and all the other different kinds of people and reasons why people are hanging out. You have a person who comes to you and talks to you and doesn't have anything to gain from you other than just your company. Well, that's something to pay attention to, and it's hard, because we have this deep need to be validated and to be listened to and to be loved, have this deep need to be validated and to be listened to and to be loved, and yet most of the people that we say or believe are doing that are, in complicated ways, serving themselves. So I think if we can just take a minute and start to let go of some of the things that are cluttering our life. And just take note, I'm going to let this go for a little while and see, do I miss it? Is it serving me? And if it's not, maybe let it go for a while. And then you start to find you can see other things more clearly.
Speaker 1:And as you let more and more things go and you get to a more simpler situation think about vacation you go from a complicated life to sitting on a beach or whatever it is you're doing. And why is that so restorative? Because you're not doing all the things. You go to a place where you're eating simple food, you're having simple pleasures sitting in the sun, feeling a breeze on your face, having conversation with people you know whatever, maybe having a drink or smoking some weed or whatever. The thing that makes you relax and feel nice is. There's nothing wrong with that. But that's where you find healing, that's where you find answers.
Speaker 1:People go on a vision quest, or they go on a hike, or they go, and they find answers. What do they do? They get away, they go to climb the mountain or whatever is their place. So I really think that considering simplicity has a huge value in finding answers and even in promoting health itself, and I certainly welcome your thoughts and if you're interested in participating in this podcast as a guest or supporting it as a sponsor, let me know. We have subscriber content available and if you think this podcast is valuable, please share it. Tell somebody about it. We're starting to get a little more visibility and, as a result, we're getting more and better quality guests and I really believe this community is growing and we have the foundation of a tremendous healing community where it doesn't require lots of money to find good answers and we can share these answers that we find together. And it's there, it doesn't cost you anything and it can give you a lot. So thank you for supporting the Healthy Living Podcast. We'll see you next time.
