Have you ever wondered how infrared sauna and cold exposure therapy work to improve your mood, heal injuries and deeply detoxify your body? Join us as we sit down with Heather O'Neill, a seasoned expert in fitness, injury recovery, and therapies for detoxification and optimal health. Heather shares her personal journey of helping her son overcome severe autism through nutritional therapies and how this experience sparked her interest in gut health and detoxification. She enlightens us about the cutting edge services she provides through her businesses - CryoFit Alamo Heights and Sweat Equity Infrared Saunas, such as cryotherapy, cold water plunges, IV drips, and infrared saunas that facilitate detox and recovery processes. She also discusses how you can do some of these therapies in your own home.
Additionally, Heather and Kara delve deep into how to support both Phase 1 and Phase 2 liver pathways to remove toxins from the body, the importance the vagus nerve plays in all aspects of health, and various body hacks you can apply to help fortify and tone the vagus nerve for full body regeneration. They also discuss the benefits of nutrient dense full-body cleansing and the upcoming LFL 28-day Community Cleanse & Reset program Kara will be hosting for the month of October 2023, designed to help participants understand the detoxification process and cleanse the body from metabolism to mindset. This invigorating conversation between Heather O'Neill and Kara Kroeger is sure to leave you with a fresh perspective and an understanding of tools you can use to navigate the constant toxic exposure we are faced with in the modern world we are living in.
https://sweatequitysa.com/
https://mycryofit.com/location/us/texas/san-antonio-alamo-heights/
https://www.landfoodlife.com/cleanse
Have you ever wondered how infrared sauna and cold exposure therapy work to improve your mood, heal injuries and deeply detoxify your body? Join us as we sit down with Heather O'Neill, a seasoned expert in fitness, injury recovery, and therapies for detoxification and optimal health. Heather shares her personal journey of helping her son overcome severe autism through nutritional therapies and how this experience sparked her interest in gut health and detoxification. She enlightens us about the cutting edge services she provides through her businesses - CryoFit Alamo Heights and Sweat Equity Infrared Saunas, such as cryotherapy, cold water plunges, IV drips, and infrared saunas that facilitate detox and recovery processes. She also discusses how you can do some of these therapies in your own home.
Additionally, Heather and Kara delve deep into how to support both Phase 1 and Phase 2 liver pathways to remove toxins from the body, the importance the vagus nerve plays in all aspects of health, and various body hacks you can apply to help fortify and tone the vagus nerve for full body regeneration. They also discuss the benefits of nutrient dense full-body cleansing and the upcoming LFL 28-day Community Cleanse & Reset program Kara will be hosting for the month of October 2023, designed to help participants understand the detoxification process and cleanse the body from metabolism to mindset. This invigorating conversation between Heather O'Neill and Kara Kroeger is sure to leave you with a fresh perspective and an understanding of tools you can use to navigate the constant toxic exposure we are faced with in the modern world we are living in.
https://sweatequitysa.com/
https://mycryofit.com/location/us/texas/san-antonio-alamo-heights/
https://www.landfoodlife.com/cleanse
Welcome to the Land Food Life podcast. I'm your host, kara Kroger. In each episode, I'm dedicated to enlightening you with invaluable insights on how we can heal the land, our ecosystems and improve our overall health and well-being. My goal is to raise your awareness about caring for nature as a whole and the life-giving breathing soil beneath your feet, help you understand the origins and medicinal value of your food and embrace the interconnectedness of everything that surrounds you. With 25 years of combined experience, studying and coaching in regenerative agriculture, natural medicine, nutrition, cooking, mindfulness and cultivating abundance, I am thrilled to share the life-changing tools I've learned. By implementing these practices, you'll experience a regulated nervous system, a nourished body, ready to pursue your dreams with energy and vigor, the ability to collaborate with nature and a renewed sense of hope and purpose. I am so grateful to have you here today. If you like what you hear, please rate, review and help me spread this information to as many people as possible. Let's get started.
Speaker 1:Hello everybody, welcome to this episode number three of the Land Food Life podcast. I am so excited today to be here with my very dear friend, heather O'Neill. Heather and I have known each other for a very long time, in fact, since we were 14 years old, and while our initial meeting was brief, in that we lived in the same town for just about a year before I moved we were always very attracted to each other's passion in life, and that led us down the path of having a very long friendship to where we are now, and so today we are going to be talking a lot about how to use infrared sauna therapy and cold water therapy or cryotherapy as a way to detoxify the body and improve health overall, and we're also going to be talking about Heather's journey in understanding detox at a very deep level by way of helping her son overcome autism with nutrition and detox. So, heather, thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I'm so excited too. This has been fun and long time coming.
Speaker 1:Indeed, yes. And just to give a little bit more background, Heather, do you want to share a little bit about what it is that you do with your work? Just to start off, give an overview.
Speaker 2:I own two businesses in San Antonio. One is called CryoFit Alamo Heights and the other one is called Sweat Equity and Ferretsanas. They are both in the health wellness realm and they both have cryotherapy, infrared saunas, compression therapy, iv, vitamin and amino acid drips, nad. Sweat Equity has quite a bit more, though. It has a cocoon pod and more infrared options and contrast therapy, which is infrared sauna plus a cold plunge, and we recently at CryoFit just got a cold plunge. So all of these awesome modalities to help recover the body as well as the mind, because it's all very interconnected, which I'm sure we're going to be touching on in this podcast. And I'm also a fitness instructor. I teach cycle classes at a place called the Amp Studio, so lots of stuff going on.
Speaker 2:But my journey here happened. I like to say it was my first left turn from traditional, conventional approaches, and that happened when my son Noah he's my oldest son he was diagnosed with autism at a very young age and that really opened up my eyes to a whole different world of approaches for helping to treat autism via really treating the gut first, and so you know, we can discuss that a little bit more if you'd like. So, really, when I started to understand those processes that were not considered under the conventional umbrella of approaches. My whole world just really started to change, understanding the gut and actually it was because of you that you planted these seeds. And it was the moment when we were out at a restaurant and Noah had a big bowl of queso and he reacted in such a way that I decided to start listening.
Speaker 1:Just to embellish on that story a little bit.
Speaker 1:Noah was very young and we went to go eat at a restaurant in San Antonio which is where Heather and I came to know each other and we were eating chips and queso, which you do in Texas Often that happens. So as we were eating chips and queso, noah really was so excited to be having the queso that he was basically drinking it. At that point he began to spin out a little bit and spiral and really kind of lose control of his behavior and I, having been a nutritionist at that time, realized, okay, you know, I think there might be some either casein or way intolerance here. And so I'm going to mention it to Heather, I'm going to say that maybe removing those things could be a thing to try to see if this would improve. And so at that moment Heather heard it and it started her wheels turning, but I don't think it was quite there yet, I don't think she was quite ready at that moment, but it planted a seed, as she said, and then Heather tell us more about how things progressed from there with Noah.
Speaker 2:Well, that incident happened. I think it was right before, or at least around that same time, where Noah had gone in for his routine vaccinations. And I want to just preface this by saying I am not an anti-vaxxer by any means. I do think that he had the perfect storm of a situation with a bunch of antibiotic use. That happened for all of these ear infections leading up to this moment. So his gut was already in a really bad spot and I didn't know that. I just did what any parent would do typically.
Speaker 2:And they back that you you know your son is suffering from an ear infection. Go to the doctor, they tell you to do, and typically that's what you do, or at least that's what I did, because I thought that was the right course of action. Right, and so he went in for his routine vaccinations and they actually doubled up because they had run out of the DTAP before in his previous appointment. So he got a dose of the DTAP in the MMR and that night we ended up in the ER and he had 104.9 degree fever. He was lethargic in the truest sense. It was a very scary situation and that was that moment where, you know, your whole world kind of turns upside down, right. I do have to just reiterate that I don't think that this was the cause of his autism, but I do think it was the icing on the cake, right, because it's never really just one thing. There's a lot of things going on in the body that we don't see with the naked eye, so that's why these podcasts are so important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and one of the reasons why I'm doing this podcast and the next one is to just emphasize the need for detoxification, because there's all kinds of things swirling around in the world around us whether it's the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we're eating, the containers that are enveloping our food these are all introducing toxins into our body that have epigenetic effects. So that means that it's these outside environmental factors that are coming into contact with our gene sequences and can literally turn genes on or off by way of that, and so oftentimes that's what is happening with vaccines and kids with autism and how they experience this shutdown that can occur in some cases, like it did with NOAA. And so, ultimately, one of the things that I just want to share is that Heather has done an amazing job and basically, noaa is recovered. He is almost 20 years old. At this point. He was nonverbal.
Speaker 1:There would be many times where I would go to visit Heather and it would be very intense because NOAA would be for days having an intense behavioral reaction to something, and it was very challenging, very consuming. Heather dove super deep in. She did everything she could. I'm just so proud of her passion and how she really decided to make it her mission to heal NOAA, and she did, and so you want to talk a little bit more about that, Heather.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, and thank you for saying that means a lot and honestly I am so grateful that you were in my life at that time and still are presently in my life. But really I don't know, if you hadn't planted those seeds, if I would have gone down the route that had gone down Meaning when that happened and we brought him home from the hospital, that's, you know, everything's shifted, lost eye contact, lost his verbal abilities, was stimming constantly and just was so emotionally and behaviorally intense Like he wanted to crawl out of his body and he didn't have the words or the maturity to even go there right. So that's when I hit Dr Google. So I like to say, and I found a site called Talk About Caring Autism, and it had mimicked so many of those seeds that you had planted about remove gluten, remove casein, remove soy, remove colors, remove all those things that basically you can't pronounce, can't pronounce it, don't put it in your body. And so that's what we started with and it was fascinating At the time I don't know if I'd classified as fascinating, but as I look back, it was fascinating because once we removed these foods from his diet, it got worse before it got better, meaning it was as if he was having a drug withdrawal, and I mean he would climb the cupboards just looking for bread.
Speaker 2:It was absolutely fascinating it's the only word I can use because I'm sitting here watching, and it is literally reiterating to me and confirming to me that the gluten and the casein had the molecular structure of an opioid once it leaked through the intestinal lining. And, sure enough, that's exactly what it looked like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that is because a lot of children with autism and other individuals as well, I mean, you know whether you're on the spectrum or whether you just have those genetics. If your gut is not producing the DPP4 enzyme, you cannot break down those gluten and casein proteins and so they change the molecular structure to actually fit into the opiate receptors and cause that drug-like reaction. And it's real. When you're watching it happen, it's very obvious Like yes, it's a chemical-based behavioral thing that's going on, and so Right, but I wasn't going to throw in the towel, I was committed.
Speaker 2:I think I called you every day, probably five times a day, like oh my God. And finally it was about three weeks later and I like to give the analogy. It was like the sun came out and all of a sudden he was calm and he was smiling and he started with words, again, not really in a coherent way, but he started with speaking. And then my mom and I this was probably a few weeks even after that took him to the Guadalupe River and we get out of the car and we're getting set up and he sees this other kid and it was his age and he goes down and he said hi, my name is Noah. Do you wanna play? And to this day, I still get so emotional about that because he hadn't said a coherent sentence since before we left that hospital, before the hospital incident for the vaccine. So it was really beautiful. I mean, this was 17 years ago so and I still get emotional about it because that was when things really started to change and I said, oh, okay, you know what that's confirmation we are on the right path. We're gonna keep going, and we did.
Speaker 2:And he stayed on this course God I gotta hand it to him and it wasn't easy. You know he was a kid and he'd see his friends eating McDonald's and all this stuff and he couldn't. But he was really, really strong and he understood the reasons why. And also, I just have to say too that beyond diet, we were also doing gentle forms of chelation, like with ALA, with cilantro, with we were treating yeast with a candida you know, my favorite candida protocol was still to this day, even though it's a lot on the body, but which was a grapefruit seed extract and part of ARCO. So all of these things, these protocols and the diet, went on for years and he was able to neurologically catch up and had a moment where he was in middle school where the staff counselors at his school said, hey, let's have an ARD, because we do have an ARD every year, and said, you know what? We just don't really know if he qualifies anymore for services. And I agreed and so he had lost his diagnosis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really amazing and it was, yeah, not an easy journey to watch. But in hindsight, and watching Noah graduate from high school and just being around at that time and just kind of having my mind blown to know that he had been in such a state and had been able to pull through and make it, and, yes, we have to give Noah a lot of props because, my God, he really did stick with the diet and you know he still sticks with it. He knows he knows like, yeah, I really can't have the gluten encasin, and while every once in a while he may have pizza, you know he knows that he has to reel it back in and it works for him when he's able to do it. So you gave him the skills in order to do that, and so I just wanna give a little reflection here real quick.
Speaker 1:Since we're talking about detox, I wanna talk about some of the things that are going on inside of folks who struggle with spectrum disorders and autism and ultimately, it is that there is a large inability to detox in the second phase of liver detoxification. So we have phase one liver detox and we have phase two liver detox, and phase one basically begins to break down a toxin but it actually makes it more toxic than it would be before it entered into the liver and then the phase two binds to it, conjugates it and pulls it out of the body. So when you have a discrepancy in phase two liver detoxification and you've gone through phase one and you have this more toxic thing than before it went into the liver but you don't have the phase two and you can't pull it out, it is very, very disturbing and it causes a lot of toxic buildup and that's another aspect of what is happening in the guts and GI tracts that is causing so many behavioral and discomfort and neural sensory issues, right? So those main things are methylation, sulfation and transulfation. Those are the components. I mean, those are the processes in the liver that allow those conjugation pathways to take place and neutralize that toxin.
Speaker 1:And so some of those different substances that Heather was talking about basically work in upregulating phase two liver detoxification and Heather does a lot of that in her businesses. Now, right, heather, so you do some IV therapy and with those IV therapies you're using glutathione and vitamin C and the alphalopoic acid. I don't know, do you do alphalopoic acid in IV therapy?
Speaker 2:No, we don't do it in IV therapy, but it is a regular use in our home, but we don't do it as IV therapy as of right now. But one thing that we do do for detoxification purposes. It's one reason, but there's multiple reasons why we do ozone, but it's ozone IV therapy. So essentially, ozone is like a detoxification of your blood. It creates an anti-pathogenic environment where it eliminates microbes, bad bacteria, fungus, parasites, dormant viruses and so on. So that is something that we do do.
Speaker 1:Do you want to talk a little bit about how you got into using cryotherapy, cold plunging, infrared saunas and that type of thing, how you got there, and a little bit about what those things do in the body and how they can be helpful for everyday people trying to detox, which we all need to do on a regular basis, and also people who are struggling with ailments like autism, spectrum disorders or autoimmune issues or cancer or all the various things that many of us are struggling from, which are, let's face it, all environmental illnesses, most illnesses coming from environmental infractions that we're experiencing over and over and over, that are causing issues like Parkinson's disease and autism, and those genes are there, but they're all being turned on by these environmental factors. So why don't you tell us a little bit more about how you learned and why you're doing what you're doing?
Speaker 2:Sure, I'll try to keep this brief and how I got here it's, I think, more about how it's evolved as well. But essentially I was a personal trainer and a group fitness instructor and I tore my meniscus and training for the rock and roll marathon and I at the time was teaching 12 spin classes a week, so that was my bread and butter. And when I tore my meniscus I had a friend who told me she said you need to go and do try this thing called whole body cryotherapy. So I immediately did that. I got in the car, went over there it was across town, like 45 minutes away and, long story short, I clustered some cryos back to back, not in that same day, but like consecutive days, and I was blown away by how much inflammation, swelling and pain went down and essentially I was able to buy myself seven months of doing cryotherapy three days a week and still teach 12 spin classes with a torn meniscus. That's how affected that was.
Speaker 1:Oh my.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, heather, I think that there's probably a lot of people who don't know what cryotherapy is.
Speaker 2:Ah yes, it is a three minute deliberate cold exposure treatment in which we use liquid nitrogen that turns into a gas surrounds your body, gets down to negative 90 to negative 120 degrees Celsius we all talk in Celsius terms in cryo world and it basically we're freezing over an eighth of a millimeter of the top layer of your skin and then when that happens, that sends the signal to your brain that you're going into hypothermia.
Speaker 2:But you're not. Your brain just doesn't know whether you're here in a chamber or in the Arctic Ocean. And when that happens, all of the blood leaves the extremities, pulls into the core, all of the blood is cleaned, oxygenated, nutrient enriched and all of the dirty blood is filtered out over the next several hours to the kidneys and liver. And when you come out of cryo and you have that vasodilation, your body is like a machine, like the next five to seven hours, but it's clean, oxygenated blood just running through your system and it's pretty amazing three minute process. So that's how I got into the business and I was able to bring in an infrared sauna and compression therapy and our IV vitamin drips. So it was kind of like a one stop shop in the fact that the initial purpose was to help recover the body, to help lower inflammation.
Speaker 1:I have a quick question before we move forward. Why does the body pull the blood into the body rather than sending it out to where it would need to warm something?
Speaker 2:Because your brain thinks your body is going into hypothermia, so all of the blood is moving into the core to protect the internal organs.
Speaker 1:Oh, right, okay.
Speaker 2:That makes sense, right? It's a hormetic effect, and we could talk about hormesis all day long. I love talking about hormesis, but it's a hormetic effect, that slight stress response in which your body thinks it's going into hypothermia, you know, and so it's in protective mode. So all that blood pulls in to the core to essentially protect those organs and clean it and clean up the blood, oxygenate it, because it's preparing for what's going to essentially be coming next. It's trying to keep itself alive. And that hormetic effect is such a short period of time that it doesn't turn into a greater stress. That's why it's only three minutes. That's one of the reasons why it's three minutes. So after that three minute process you have vasodilation and the body's like whew, okay, we're alive.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I loved going into cryo fit and doing it, especially in the summer, right, Because it gets really hot in Texas and you can go in and do some cryo and even if it's 100 degrees outside when you walk outside, your skin is cold to the touch for at least 30 minutes after doing it and you feel really invigorated and you can handle it. So if you don't want to do it for the health aspects, you could always do it just for cooling the body down for all those people experiencing the high temperatures of this summer.
Speaker 2:Right, right, that, and cold plunge too. And when we look at people who don't necessarily use it for the recovery aspect, they use it for energy that piece of it. There's so many great reasons to do deliberate cold exposure, whether it's via cryo or via cold plunge, but you have this massive endorphin release, you have this dopamine increase, especially with the cold plunge that increases at two to five fold from baseline, which will last for several hours. So I tell anybody if you're stressed, if you're feeling stressed, get yourself into a cold plunge. You know we can even talk about that and how that affects your detox process as well, because that plays a big role. Anything hormetic, really, that activates the parasympathetic nervous system via the vagus nerve is going to help to expedite any type of detox process.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. The vagus nerve is a really long nerve that stems from our brain all the way down our body, branching out into the liver and the digestive tract, and it is basically what relays the message via the gut microbiome and the brain. So the vagus nerve can actually sense what the chemicals that the gut microbiome is putting out and then send signals up the vagus nerve to stimulate different brain activity. And the gut microbiome is oftentimes giving signals for those neurotransmitters that Heather was talking about. And so ultimately, by way of toning the vagus nerve, you can improve a lot of pieces.
Speaker 1:And that cold water therapy is by far one of the best ways to tone. So Heather has the cryotherapy via the chamber and the cold plunge, but I do it at home. I mean because I live in the mountains, the water that comes out of the tap is very cold. So every day I, for 30 seconds at the end of my shower, allow the cold water specifically to hit my face and the back of my neck for 30 seconds, and studies have shown that even just that allow so much of a greater ability for that vagus nerve to have tone. And so do you want to expand on that a little, heather? Sure.
Speaker 2:So when I look at a healthy body and all of the pathways to help to improve just overall health, all roads lead back to the vagus nerve 100%.
Speaker 1:It's true, yes, and it's all the rage right now. You've probably heard a lot of people talking about the vagus nerve, but there's a lot of research going on.
Speaker 2:And so I try to tell people you know, in an information age it's very easy to get overwhelmed on. You know, like if you have a topic of like detox, right, you can Google detox and like, okay, there's this protocol, there's this one, that's like, oh my God, and it's like so much information. If you keep it simple. And when it comes to what you can do on the body end, like what you can do physically not necessarily supplementally or dietarily, but what you can do as the physical component, bring it back to the vagus nerve. And so the whole reason for that is because if we have weak, vagal tone, we are spending more of our time in a sympathetic nervous system state, right, and that's our fight or flight. And if you're living in this world, then you can see how a lot of people are living in that state of fight or flight. They don't even know it. Right, the stress, the cortisol drip, it's just a constant vicious cycle. And so, really, for people to look at, like, how do you physically help to mitigate that that kind of stress? Bring it back to the vagus nerve, because you want to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. That's our rest and digest, and there's so many great tools in which you can do that. My two favorite ways are deliberate cold exposure and deliberate heat exposure, which we can get into in just a moment. But I mean you can bring it back to the breath. You can strengthen your vagal tone just through breath alone, through meditation. So there are other ways. You don't have to necessarily if you're like, oh gosh, how am I going to find Asana. There are many different tools and tricks that you can do.
Speaker 2:But bringing it back to that vagal tone. You want to strengthen the vagal tone to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, and I like to say it's like a muscle the more you do it and the more you practice it, the stronger it gets. And when that parasympathetic nervous system is activated, then energy in your body can be dispersed more evenly. So when we are living in a fight or flight or a sympathetic state, then what ends up happening is that your digestion can get really messed up, like you can become constipated. There's not enough energy going to the gut to help to make those systems work more effectively and efficiently, which will also affect our methylation processes, which will affect our mental state, which will affect our cortisol levels. So it's all tied together. So you just bullseye it right back in to the vagal tone right there.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely, I love it. I love it. And it's so important for people to know this because in my practice, working as a nutritionist, I see so many people who have constipation. And the vagus nerve is in charge of creating peristalsis in the gut, which is what is the rhythmic movements of the muscles in our colon to move the waste out of our body. And if we're not removing waste from our body, if we're not having a bowel movement every day, that waste is sitting there and our body reabsorbs it and ultimately that's really devastating in the long run if you have a lifetime or many, many decades, of not being able to eliminate waste efficiently.
Speaker 1:So, yes, bringing it all back to the vagus nerve, and you know I have been doing a fun thing. I have been singing in the car, because that's another thing that you can do to tone vagus nerve, but instead of singing with music, I've been making it my own songs. Of course I have, of course I have. I mean it's silly and that type of thing, but I find that if I don't sing to other music, I will play with the pitches and the ranges of my own voice more and then like figure out the tones that resonate deep in my chest, because that's what you want is. You want that deep resonation in your chest to tone the vagus nerve? So just figure out the tones that tend to bring that into me more and I play around with it, whereas with you, if you're just singing to a song on the car, you're probably not going into as many ranges as you might just by playing with it on your own.
Speaker 2:I wish I could be in the car with you while you were doing that. I'd have a blast.
Speaker 1:Well, when I come to San Antonio next month, we can drive around and sing ridiculously together. I love it, that's great, awesome, okay, well, let's go on, because there is also. Well, do you want to add anything else to the cold therapy component, or should we move on to infrared?
Speaker 2:I would say that when we look at deliberate cold exposure, first of all, both cryo and cold plunging can stimulate the vagus nerve.
Speaker 2:I will say I do think that cold plunging is a little bit more effective in that because you really can sink down the back of your skull, back in there to really open that up. So I just wanted to preface before we move on to the infrared sauna. The other thing I was going to say about cold plunging is that, again, it does seem like it would be counterintuitive that that kind of stimulation would put you into rest or digest to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. But it's absolutely amazing Once you get past the initial shock and you can get your breath under control because what's happening is your heart rate is slowing down. So I like to say it's like catching a hiccup, because when you have a hiccup you know you're using your breath, but if you hold it and you're able to control the breath and the hiccup goes away, it's very similar in that kind of breath, in that initial first minute when you're in the cold plunging, you're able to get that breath under control. You actually melt into the water.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can experience like some deep states of relaxation, even though it is not the place where you would think that that would happen.
Speaker 2:Right. I know A lot of people say there's no way and I'm like, come on, come on, let me show you, let's cold-punch you. And they're like, oh my God, that was amazing.
Speaker 1:It's a pretty mind-blowing experience. It really is. I highly recommend giving it a go. I know that a lot of people really fear cold water and I often times, okay, here's something I want to ask, because people have said this to me a number of times and I don't necessarily have the right answer to respond. One of the things that I've heard is people will say I can't do cold water. It makes me seize up, which makes my pain more intense. So I can understand that, because I know how you can seize up when you get into cold water. But the long-term aspect will actually help relax that. But what do you tell people when that's an issue or is sometimes cold-punching, not for everybody and if somebody experiences that, you tell them not to do it.
Speaker 2:There are definitely some contraindications that are physically real which would not make you a good candidate for cold-punching, like uncontrolled hypertension or uncontrolled diabetes neuropathy. If you have mild neuropathy, usually you're going to be okay. There's ways that don't put your hands in if you can prop your feet out, if you're in a tub-like scenario. However, when it comes to in my experience, there's two things that get in the way of people being able to do a cold punch. One is fear and one is the inability to be able to relax while they're in there. So that seizing is your body saying I can't, I can't, I can't do it. So I guess the fear is a component in that as well. However, one of the things that we do at both cryofit and sweat equity is we do some pre-plunge breath work with them beforehand. It's super simple yet very effective breath work to oxygenate the blood, remove carbon dioxide from the blood and to move heat through the lungs. And just doing 15, 20 rounds of this with them preps their body and their lungs to be able to successfully get into that cold water and be able to get that breath under control in a more rapid way. Right, so that you're quote unquote catching the hiccup a lot faster.
Speaker 2:The other thing too, when I talk about people seizing is. It kind of reminds me of just to give you a visual when you go to the beach and you see that person who is like inching their way into the cold water and they look like they're suffering like a long dramatic like, oh, it's so hard, it's so cold, oh, and it's just inching, like if you do that in the cold water, no doubt 1000% in a cold plunge you will seize up and you probably won't get anywhere below or above your waistline. So rip the bandaid off like, go in, don't hesitate, go into the shoulders, keep your hands out of the water, at least for the first few times, until you start to become more familiar with how your body responds. But usually when you see somebody who says that they seize up is because they're that person at the beach, just like I'm so cold, I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, Absolutely yeah. You know, I heard somebody say something recently that just had a huge impact on me and I want to share it here because it has so much to do with everything that we're talking about. What that person said was it's really interesting that all the things that we do now that we pay a lot of money for that, are these body hacks like cold plunging and infrared sauna and red light therapy and various, you know, sleeping on magnets or whatever right. These are all things that we just did naturally, when we were living in nature in tune with nature. We were swimming and bathing in cold water. We were looking at the sunlight every day. It was shining into our eyes early in the morning, helping to balance our circadian rhythm. We were stepping on the earth without shoes regularly, where we could absorb electromagnetic fields. We didn't have to sleep on a magnet instead.
Speaker 1:So you know all of these things. I mean you can also just do these things by living more in sync with nature and walking outside every morning and looking at the sun and taking some time to walk barefoot and going swimming in places around you with cold water. I mean, even in Texas there's 68 degree water that you can jump into coming out of the ground. Nature knew we were just there. Yeah, exactly, Barton Springs. I took Noah on Sunday.
Speaker 2:I was like let's go to Barton Springs. Yeah, I mean you're absolutely correct. I mean we overcomplicate it, I think and we can really just taking, you know, 15 minutes a day and sit outside and breathe, it's free.
Speaker 1:It's free, it's free, it's free air.
Speaker 2:You don't even get free air anymore at the gas station.
Speaker 1:You now have to pay for it to fill up your diaries, but anyway, Okay. So let's talk about infrared sauna a little bit. Let's talk about well, one of the things that I love doing at sweat equity is the contrast therapy, where you go into the sauna first and then you do the cold plunge. So that has its own set of benefits. But how about we just go into how infrared works differently from regular saunas and all the health benefits that come from it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. In an infrared sauna we use full spectrum infrared, which is, if you think about a spectrum, it's near and your moves into mid and it moves into far infrared. And then, if you even take it back to the near, right in between, where infrared is and UV is, is this little anybody spectrum of light called red light. So we'll talk about that in a moment.
Speaker 2:But in a full spectrum infrared sauna you're going to detox 28 to 30% of your toxic load, versus a traditional sauna, which is four to 7% of your toxic load. So that's a pretty significant difference. And the reason for that is is that far infrared is going to penetrate up to three inches into the tissues of your cells to create a vibration within the water molecules of those cells to release and shake up all the nasty right that's sitting in those cells. The near and the mid infrared is what is going to help you to produce heat internally so that you use your largest detoxification organ, your epidermis, to sweat out all the nasty all the while and this is a big one by passing the kidneys and the liver. So they're like we get a break, and that is a beautiful thing because you want to be able to give your liver and your kidneys a break from time to time, and so that is why I really direct people to using the infrared sauna when they want to detox, because it's going to really help to expedite that.
Speaker 1:So quick question, Heather Do all toxins take that pathway or do some have to go through the liver? What can come out via infrared sauna use in the sweat and what cannot?
Speaker 2:Great question. So here's the way I like to answer this During the time that you are sweating, because when you are in that sauna you are going to sweat Even though the ambient air it's warm. It's not like a traditional sauna, like 180 to 200 degrees, where it's dry air. It's definitely more comfortable, but that near and that mid infrared is what is going to help you to produce that heat internally. So when you're actively sweating in the sauna, it is quite amazing what can actually come out of your body. Now I will say that when you come out of the sauna, you don't want to, unless you have to take a shower because you have to go back to work or whatever the case may be. You want to allow your body to actively keep sweating because it's going to keep detoxing. If you were to say to quick shower, whatever is left that needed to come out is going to go through the liver and the kidneys right, because it would be reabsorbed into the system. Your body is still in detox mode even 30 minutes to 45 minutes after you use the sauna. So if you have to take a shower, then you have to take a shower, but if you can avoid taking a shower and let the processes continue. That would be great. So I just wanted to say that first.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing. I'm going to give a little story. We have a lot of people that come in who have been exposed to toxic mold, right? And they were having all of these symptoms physical, neurological, digestive, all these symptoms and they were going to these doctors. Doctors couldn't figure it out or they would say, oh, this is what you have. They would be misdiagnosed.
Speaker 2:So by the time they got to cryo fit or sweat equity, we were there quote unquote left, turn right, and they're frustrated and they said you know what? I decided to take it into my own hands. I Googled my symptoms. I think this is what's going on with me, right? And so a lot of times people are renovating their homes. Their homes are here and be. They didn't know there's all this mold, anyway. So they start coming in. Now I can always tell when somebody has a pretty high toxic load when they come out of the sauna and they say man, I was so hot, I was so hot and I was in there for 30 minutes and I wanted to sweat, but I couldn't sweat, or maybe I didn't start sweating until like the last three to five minutes.
Speaker 1:It's because their toxic load is so heavy that it literally is just being held onto in their cells which is pretty crazy, because once you get used to going into these sonos, you start sweating quick and you sweat so much it's like you are pouring sweat out of your body.
Speaker 2:You have to drink a lot of water your nose, your toes, your knuckles and your knees, everything yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you look at your toes, they have little beads of sweat. Actually, it's your toes kind of start first A lot of times, yeah.
Speaker 2:So when they tell me that, I'm like okay, and I tell them listen, if you can trust me and give this two weeks of coming in, let's start it with, like every other day, until you get to that point where you are just like the floodgates open and you are actively breaking a sweat. Within the first 10 minutes I said and then let's have this conversation again. So I had a client who gave me such a gift and she recorded her journey through pictures and again, she couldn't sweat, couldn't sweat, she's frustrated, she's just like I can't believe how hot it is in there and I can't even break a sweat. So finally, the day that it happened, oh my gosh, she comes out and she's like Heather, oh my God, I'm going to take these towels home, I'm going to wash them, I'm going to buy you new towels. I don't know what happened. And she shows me the pictures and there are black specs all over her towel.
Speaker 2:I almost started crying tears of joy for her. I was high-fiving her, I was so happy for her. I said girl, I was like this is amazing. It's like the dam broke. Right Now we're able to really start purging those toxins and over the course of a few weeks and it just kept happening every day, every time she came in. She'd come in like four times a week. They just all these toxins come out and then the colors would start to change from like a deep dark grayish brown to almost like a brownie orangeish color. And so we have this whole thing documented. It's really, really fascinating, and she's still a client of mine to date. She comes in like twice a week. She's like oh, never again, I never want that kind of toxic load.
Speaker 1:It's really life-disturbing. It's so life-disturbing and my sister just went through that and when you don't know what's going on and then you finally figure it out, it brings a whole other level of awareness to the need for detox just on a regular, daily basis, whether you have mold exposure or not and a lot of people have mold exposure. Huge amounts of people are struggling with that. I mean, I even noticed the black spots. I remember when I first went in I was like Heather, this is happening. And you said well, usually that's some type of mold release coming out and so very scary and also interesting and it's nice to know that we have this tool to use.
Speaker 2:Yes, and we have to realize we are toxins in, toxins out every single day. So we have to find a way to stimulate the vagus nerve, strengthen the tone, activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which happens in the sauna, just so happens. In the sauna you're getting that massive detox also through your epidermis. It's all happening very quickly in there. But the other thing I was going to say is we had a client who had dangerously high levels of lead in his system and the doctor thought that once he was able to start to really methylate properly, he would discover mercury. And this is a grown man.
Speaker 2:Mercury is very hard to detect across his blood brain barrier. It is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, so to speak. But usually when you are able to purge out other things, then you can get to mercury. You have to like keep peeling layers off right Until you can actually detect mercury. So he had pretty high levels of lead in his system. So that's why he started to use the sauna. And same thing I mean just all of these gray, just solid gray marks coming out on his towel, just dumping, dumping, dumping and about two months later he had his levels checked again and man, what a difference that was. I mean, he still had detectable levels of lead, but it was so significantly different and they were able to start detecting mercury.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really is quite an amazing tool, and I do just wanna say here right now, in this moment, that we highly suggest working with a doctor if you're going to go into heavy metal detoxification and that type of thing. These are things that can be very serious to the body, and so, ultimately, you wanna find a practitioner, like a functional medicine doctor, who is experienced in working with heavy metal detoxification, and if that's something that you think you've been exposed to and you wanna try to move through it, especially if, like if you're getting dental work and you're removing amalgam fillings, like, make sure that you are doing some toxic remediation at the same time but please do that with the assistance of a medical doctor to help you.
Speaker 2:And I highly recommend that if you have amalgam fillings, do not go into the sauna. Do not go into an infrared sauna. Most people don't have them anymore, so much. But if you have amalgam fillings, you want to avoid the sauna.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I mean there's a lot of people who do have them. I just was reading about it yesterday because somebody said to me oh, they don't make amalgam fillings anymore and I said, no, I'm pretty sure they do and they do. So they're still being provided because they are a very inexpensive, long lasting way to fill a cavity. I mean, they really do last a very long time. So, while they've changed some of the metal loads, amalgam means like a combination of things right that come together to create a strong bond and ultimately they are still using them. So you do need to talk with your dentist about what's going in your mouth and also don't assume that, because they're bad, that they've been removed from our system, because that's not the way we work in this country.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, unfortunately right. But then for red. It's so powerful that it's so effective that what it does, it can leach them out.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. If you're working in some type of a job where you're exposed to a lot of chemical exposure whether you're a farmer and you're using pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, fertilizers, or you even maybe you're a florist and you just make flowers arrangements all day, which is a very beautiful thing to do You're probably coming into contact with a lot of different chemicals. If you're working in a factory that is using plastics to package the goods, if you are basically working in any type of furniture store furniture is constantly off-gassing. Any materials supply store lots of off-gassing coming off so this is the kind of tool that can be really, really beneficial to you. So, all right, heather, do you wanna keep talking about infrared?
Speaker 2:One more thing about infrared. I get that a lot of people don't have the option to go to a studio to use infrared zonas. I will say my favorite and I'm not endorsing anybody, I get nothing from this, but my favorite at home infrared mats are created by a company called HireDose and they are April Spectrum Infrared mats. You just lay on the floor and you hop in it like a little sleeping bag and they are incredibly effective. So if you don't have the option but you wanna invest in something at home, I would look into HireDose.
Speaker 1:Good suggestion. Do you know a price point on that? A?
Speaker 2:price point I wanna say they run about eight or 900. Yeah, but don't quote me. I don't have one, because I have a lot of zonas at my place of work but I use Clearlight Infrared zonas. They are the gold standard of zonas. So those start at like four grand and they go all the way up.
Speaker 1:And those are available for the home.
Speaker 2:Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1:You know, for people who are living rurally and don't have access, you could buy one of these floor zonas or a full on walk-in sauna, and then you could buy a little horse trough and do your cold plunging.
Speaker 2:Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. Well, we're coming up on time here, but I know that we did wanna talk about the Herxheimer effect real quick before we end, because this can happen in any detox methodology that you decide to use. So why don't you explain a little bit about what that is and what people can do as they move through it, if they experience it and that type of thing?
Speaker 2:Sure. So I laugh a little bit and I was this way too. So I'm laughing at my old self. But I laugh sometimes when people say, oh, I'm about to do a cleanse and it's gonna feel so good and it's gonna be great. And they haven't set them themselves up for situations that could arise, which is the Herxheimer effect, and usually for people who are doing a detox and they don't know about this and they haven't really set up expectations or looked at situations that can occur. This is the reason. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where people will throw in a towel because they're like, oh my God, what is happening to me?
Speaker 1:I don't feel good. There's a lot of toxins in my blood, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly. So this is such an important point to mention because this is a good thing. When this happens, I look at it as a positive. Now it can be very uncomfortable, but there are ways where you can expedite that reaction. One of my favorite and easiest ways is having activated charcoal on hand, which will then because what happens is is that we, like we said, toxins in, toxins out. Those toxins have to go somewhere.
Speaker 2:And when you are effectively killing the things, there's going to be byproduct that is going to float around. And then where does that go? And it's either going to be reabsorbed into the system or it's going to be excreted via your inner feces, right? So typically, when we are detoxing and there is a lot of die off, and that die off is just floating around in the body and it's starting to get reabsorbed, that's that point where you're like, oh my gosh, I feel like I'm getting the flu, right, or I have the runs, or I just don't feel good.
Speaker 2:So activated charcoal, along with zeolites, will help to find the byproduct, almost like encapsulate them and then they will be excreted through the urine or the feces mainly the feces as opposed to be free floating in your system. So it really does like bubble them up and then push them out of the body so that you don't have those experiences physically, emotionally, mentally. It can really throw you off. If you don't know that that's a possibility, you really think you could be getting sick. Epsom salts is another great way to throw them into a bathtub. Those salts are going to pull that via your epidermis so it has a way to exit the body. And then, for those of you that don't know what zeolites are, it's a naturally occurring group of minerals that has the ability to absorb toxins and heavy metals and other harmful substances, and you can get them in like I like liquid form. I think that's probably the easiest way to do. It is just you just drop some on your tongue and man, they are effective, they really really work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if y'all are interested in talking about supplementation, I am available to help and work with a line of products called Designs for Health and I sell those on my website, so you can access the link to buy supplements there if you're interested. And Zeolite is one that we have, along with Charcoal and other binders too, and that is a good segue into me announcing that I'm going to be hosting a detox program, a virtual community detox. That will be a 28-day detox for the month of October, from October 3rd through the 28th, and it's going to be a full-body metabolic detox as well as a mindset detox. So we'll be doing an elimination diet and using some supplementation and products that help upregulate both phase one and phase two Liberty Toxification, as well as looking at some of the components in our life that can, unfortunately, be a little toxic as well.
Speaker 1:So how can we look at our relationships and our abundance mindset and kind of just hit the reset button on the body and mind. So if you're interested in learning more about that, you can go to my website. There's a wait list that you can sign up for to be sent more information about that. So that's exciting. And then also, heather and I are collaborating a bit on that and she's going to be offering a discount to the people who are in San Antonio who want to participate or anywhere in the surrounding area. So that's exciting.
Speaker 2:Yes, super, super excited to do this and feel very honored that you asked me to be a part of this with you and for you guys listening, whether it's your first time or you've been following Kara for a while now, I've never met a person that is more qualified than Kara to run this type of program and to offer this type of program. She is more knowledgeable than anybody I have ever met when it comes to this arena, so y'all are in good, good hands.
Speaker 1:Aw, thank you, sister. I appreciate that, I'm very excited about it.
Speaker 1:I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Detoxing and cleansing is something I try to do once or twice a year. I know that you do that quite a bit yourself, heather, and as well as every day, right. But like these bigger, deeper detoxes and it can just really be good. So many of us walk around struggling with foggy thinking and low energy and excessive weight and we just get caught up in the day in, day out of eating crappy things and we have a hard time breaking it. And so, in setting an intention, putting 28 days aside, being with a community that you can kind of bounce what's happening off of is really a great way to go about it, because doing it on your own is fine, but it's a lot more fun to have that support. So Heather and I would detox them together.
Speaker 2:When I lived, in Hocacita, I know I was just about to say. I remember like, oh man, yeah, I'm going to do this detox with you. This go round two. So I'm excited. I just have to say I remember the first time I did a detox with you, I came out of that other end and literally I called it having vampire senses, because my taste, my smell, my thought process, I forgot that that was the way it should be, and so to me it was like vampire senses. Oh my God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's just so good I can actually smell this.
Speaker 1:Right, and a big reason is because this detox is not about deprivation. It's about like, let's neutrify your body and I know that neutrify is not a word, but I love that word because it's so much better than nourish right, I don't know. Neutrify it's powerful.
Speaker 2:So what it's doing is.
Speaker 1:It's my word, and it's basically providing you with all of these things that you don't get on the day in and day out, because you're eating refined foods. Even if they're clean refined foods, they still don't have the same nutrients in them that you're getting from these supplements that we take as well as these delicious recipes that I give. So, in general, you're eating one meal a day and drinking two shakes a day, and so those shakes have a lot of nutrients in them, and then the foods that I'm recommending have a lot of nutrients, and so you probably were able to smell better, because you literally took in enough zinc during that time period that it puts your smell back where it needed to be, because zinc is what allows us to have a heightened sense of smell. So just one of the benefits. Yeah, yeah, totally Well, that's really cool.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm excited to do this, and my other son, holden, who Karen knows very well, is, I'm telling you now he's wanting to jump on board. So can you believe it? That's exciting, it's happening, yeah.
Speaker 1:Get the teens involved. We got to get the teens involved. Teach them young. Absolutely, absolutely Well, heather, I just want to say thank you again so much for sharing all of your knowledge and experience and stories with us and I know that it will be fun to have you back on another time to talk about more things as we move forward in this podcast. But thank you so very much.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it was a pleasure and an honor and I love you to pieces.
Speaker 1:I love you too, so much, my friend. All right, Well, thanks for joining us everybody, and we will see you in two weeks at the next episode. Happy detox. Well, my friends, there you have it. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Land Food Life podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show and gained some true gems of insight that will enhance your quality of life. If you're looking for personalized guidance on holistic health, nutrition or running a regenerative agriculture business, visit LandFoodLifecom to explore my virtual and in-person coaching programs. You can also join my mailing list at LandFoodLifecom to receive exclusive perks and discounts for email subscribers only. I appreciate your valuable time spent here with me and if you're digging this content and you're finding it helpful, please share it with your friends and others in your network. You can post a screenshot of the podcast thumbnail, tag it on social media and rate the show on your preferred podcast platform. I am very much looking forward to our next chat in two weeks. Same time, same place. Bye for now, Thank you.