Healing Beyond The Plate with Dr. Ellyn Hilliard-McLeod

We sit down with Dr. Ellyn Hilliard-McLeod to talk about why real healing takes more than a perfect diet and how symptoms can reveal what needs to change in our lives. We dig into processed food traps, core beliefs around eating, and the inner work of forgiveness, identity, and responsibility that can shape long-term health.  

• Dr McLeod’s journey from a Crohn’s diagnosis to a holistic path  
•  How “organic” labels can hide ultra-processed foods that still drive inflammation  
• Why calming the nervous system through meditation and yoga supports gut health  
• Childhood food programming and the core beliefs that sabotage change  
• Community support groups as a tool for consistency and emotional processing.
• Polypharmacy risks and why we push for smarter questions in short doctor visits .
• Becoming your own advocate while using integrative medicine wisely  
• “How is this serving me?” as a post-diagnosis reflection question  
• Anger, resentment, and the shift from acute “hot” illness to chronic “cold” disease
• Why It Takes More Than Carrot Juice focuses on mindset, forgiveness, and meaning  

To learn more about Dr. Ellyn McLeod or to purchase her book please visit https://sedonasolution.com/

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Transcript

Illness As A Mirror

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Of illness, uh, you know, certainly dietarily, I see that people eat a lot of the goo, you know, that runners that runners eat. So they're eating those major processed foods in order to gain energy. So I think that's the biggest question. How is this serving me? What is it about this illness that's shining a light on my lifestyle, on my relationships, on how I feel about myself? And how can I forgive others and myself for the way that I'm thinking that's creating this anxiety and tension.

Meet Dr Ellen McLeod

SPEAKER_03 1:00

And today we have one hell of a guest for you. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Ellen Hillard McLeod. Dr. McLeod has dedicated her life to helping others find healing and wholeness through not only a holistic approach to health, but she earned her PhD in holistic nutrition from Clayton College of Natural Health. Ellen brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to her work. She has owned and directed two wellness centers, the 12 Ways Healing Center in Boldo, Colorado, and the Healing Center in Fair Oaks, California. She strives to create spaces where people can explore healing on every level. Her counseling work is deeply rooted in the principles of a course in miracles and the teachings of Dr. Rudolph Steiner. She's also here to talk about her book, It Takes More Than Carrot Juice. And with that, let's get started. Hi Pat, so nice to have you in a conversation with me today. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. So did I miss anything in your bio that you'd like to add that you'd like to touch on? That's pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

I I'm currently in Sedona, Arizona. So um my practice is under Sedona Solution here in uh Sedona, and I uh conduct support groups for people with chronic illness here.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

And you have uh a new book that just got released.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

I do. I do. It's called It Takes More Than Carrot Juice, and it's the missing ingredients to healing, and it's stories of 20 of my clients and how they transform their emotional, spiritual, and physical health. And that healing isn't always physical. I I want to really emphasize that. Sometimes you can have huge wake-up calls about relationship, forgiveness, uh, the love that you give yourself without necessarily surviving a life-threatening illness.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

And you have you have uh this you speak from personal experience. You this is a personal journey for you.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Yeah, not only my own personal diagnosis of Crohn's disease back um in 1991, but also um the death of my family members. I lost both my father, my mother, and my my brother to cancer. My sister was also diagnosed, but she uh caught it early and practiced a lot of the things we're going to be talking about and really learned to love herself again. So, yes, I've I've been through a little bit of this with uh family members and and close friends as

The Crohn’s Wake Up Call

SPEAKER_02 3:46

well.

SPEAKER_03 3:46

What was it like for you um when you received that diagnosis?

SPEAKER_02 3:52

You know, at the time, um the physician and I went to a gastroenterologist, uh, when I asked what's the remedy, because I had just had a child at the time, and uh he said, Well, we can give you some medications until we have to do surgeries, and then we'll just slowly remove parts of your colon. And that just didn't sit well with me. And I I sought out uh other options. I mean, obviously that puts the fear into you at the age of you know 29 years old at the time I was diagnosed. And I, through a set of kind of synchronistic circumstances, I met a nutritionist who really not only inspired me to change the way that I ate, but she also uh really inspired me to do this work and continue to pursue it from not only a nutritional perspective, but also a spiritual perspective.

SPEAKER_03 4:47

Now, when you're in the medical office, did they ever ask you about your nutrition, or was it simply go right to medicine and surgery?

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Never once. And then you would think with a gastroenterologist that food would be important. Now, I realize things have changed a little and that almost 45% of all MDs now recommend some sort of complimentary medicine now, but that certainly wasn't the case then. And physicians on average only get about two weeks of nutrition classes in medical school. So that wasn't a big option then.

SPEAKER_03 5:20

That's absolutely terrifying to think about that the fuel which sustains us and heals us, they get two weeks of training in.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Well, and and we also have to understand that most medical schools are sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. So you're really looking at an education on what kind of drugs or surgery or radiation you can do on someone. So that's where their profit is. Um, and I I understand that. But there's lots of other options out there. You know, I've I've had some amazing experiences with acupuncturists and naturopaths and Chinese physicians, and um, so there's lots of options, even massage therapists now are incredibly trained in healing and cranial uh sacral therapy. There's osteopaths that get alternative kinds of education.

SPEAKER_03 6:10

So when you walked out of that doctor's office, you know, I'm sure you were feeling quite quite frustrated at that point, having heard, you know, your options

Processed Food In Disguise

SPEAKER_03 6:20

were so limited. Where did you first go? What did what was your first step once you left there?

SPEAKER_02 6:26

You know, I I ended up looking um for books. Uh I went over to the bookstore in town. I started looking for books that related to this, and um, I ended up picking up a business card of a nutritionist, and she was also a colon hydrotherapist that was uh posting there at the bookstore, and I ended up giving her a call and making an appointment. So my initial conversation was with uh a woman I thought was going to give me nutritional advice and detoxification advice. But similar to what happens with me and my clients, it ends up becoming a deeper conversation. When you spend time with people and you don't have just 15 minutes, I mean, most physicians spend 15 minutes in an appointment with their patient. So when you've got an hour and a half, an hour to hour and a half with a practitioner that you're gonna see again in the next week for an hour and an hour and a half, you have this opportunity to have these very deep conversations about your life purpose and anything that upsets you and looking deeper into what your core beliefs are. And and that certainly happened with me.

SPEAKER_03 7:37

And what was what was your healing journey like when it came to your crown sleep? Because that's a very serious diagnosis to receive.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Well, it's interesting. She actually came over to my house, opened my refrigerator, and I thought I ate pretty healthy. And I had a lot of things that I felt were pretty healthy. I had, you know, applesauce and I had, you know, uh lots of fruit things that I had in my refrigerator or on my counter, but I would have like bottled marinara sauce that was organic, right? Yeah, right. And she said, Oh my gosh, you have so many processed foods. And I really was in kind of shock because I really thought they were all healthy. They all had organic on the label or gluten-free on the label. And so I had to have my own really deep education about what a processed food is. And I was at that time already kind of delving into gluten-free foods, but not in a in a real uh solid way. I would just kind of dabble in it here and there. And she really helped me see that, if especially for someone with a Crohn's disease diagnosis, that any types of refined flowers at all were really difficult for an inflamed colon to tolerate. So she helped me dump everything out of my fridge and cupboards, and we went and replaced everything from farmers' markets.

SPEAKER_03 9:01

And how soon after that whole purge did did you start to see an improvement in your own?

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Well, I'll tell you, within six months, when I went back in to see the gastroenterologist, he was shocked and he wondered what happened, and there was no more inflammation, and I was having regular stools. So within six months of really focusing my eating and and my my spiritual life, I started meditation, I started taking yoga classes. So it was calming my nervous system down at the same time. And so he was pretty shocked. He thought that he was gonna have to do some sort of surgery on me within the year, and that didn't happen.

SPEAKER_03 9:45

That must have felt amazing.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Oh my gosh. And that's when I realized, oh why do people wait? I I think the the stats now are in 2025, 76% of Americans have at least one chronic illness diagnosis, and and 50% of Americans have two or more. So America's really sick. We are heading down the wrong path.

SPEAKER_03 10:13

No, I I I'd agree with you. Um, because every time you turn around, you hear someone else has there's a rise in cancer, there's a rise in in chronic pain, or or there's just all these diseases you lupus, all these awful, really debilit Lyme diseases, all these really awful debilitating diseases. And obesity is huge too. Obesity is a big one.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

And yeah, Ozempic is becoming one of the most uh widely used uh uh pharmaceuticals. It used to be antidepressants and pain medication, but Ozempic is catching up.

SPEAKER_03 10:53

The way that they just prescribe it, like it's like it's nothing.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Yeah, I don't think I don't think the um the the jury is in yet on what the side of long-term side effects of that are it's it's such a new drug.

SPEAKER_03 11:09

No, I've I've seen it like close hand with with friends use it and it's they've ended up in the hospital for now. And you touched on something during your journey

Core Beliefs That Block Healing

SPEAKER_03 11:20

that it wasn't just about the food you ate, there was a spiritual component to your healing. Could you dive into that a little bit more?

SPEAKER_02 11:29

Absolutely. So one of the things that I noticed with my clients, and I think that this nutritionist who started working with me certainly noticed it with hers, is that the compliance to stay on a program, whether it's an exercise program or a diet program, is very difficult for people because they have these core beliefs that have been instilled in them since childhood. And many of those core beliefs prevent them from being able to be successful with some of their other options, whether it be, you know, learning to uh eat differently or whether it be uh exercising and improving your muscle mass. A lot of people have some sort of a childhood trauma. It doesn't even have to be a difficult trauma, it doesn't even have to be sexual abuse or physical abuse. It could be that your parents constantly told you, eat everything on your plate. There's children starving in the world. And that you adopt this core belief when it's been drilled into your head. And so you think, oh, but I can't waste that food. I've got to eat every bite. Or, or there's control issues. You know, your parents were constantly trying to force you to eat something healthy. This happens with a lot of families that think they're eating healthy, forcing their kids to eat healthy and not ever put anything that has sugar in their mouth. And so you develop this control issue and you're gonna show them, and you're just gonna control your life and and eat the way you want to eat. And so there's so many different types of core beliefs. I call them the archetypes. I've kind of developed uh these seven core beliefs that keep people stuck in their eating pattern. So I really had to look at that for myself as well, is what was my my program? And my parents were definitely the types that would be uh programming me around that don't waste your food type. You know, eat every bite. You had to come home from school and make sure everything in your lunch pail was gone. So if if you didn't finish it, you'd throw it away before you got home.

SPEAKER_03 13:38

No, I I I I grew up with that too, like waste not want not, like you weren't allowed to leave until everything was cleaned off your plate. And that's a lot of pressure. And if you're full and you keep eating, um, what does that do to your system internally? Like if you're forced to continue to eat, what kind of message is that send to your body? Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

And you know what? We had uh Thanksgiving at my grandmother's. This is such a family pattern, right? This is an ancestral pattern, but we would have our little paper napkins on our laps, and and you know, grandma would come around and and serve the dinner, and you know, it was usually some sort of you know, corned beef or something, right? And if we didn't eat everything on our plate, we would be have to sit there at the child's table at Thanksgiving until it was finished. So all of us learned to shovel the food into our paper napkin on our laps. And we would, yeah, and we all bought into this, you know. This was like a group think. So we would all wrap it up and put it in the trash can on the way out, you know. So it is it it's usually comes from a long line of psychological food programming.

SPEAKER_03 14:50

And what are your what are your eating patterns like today? Like, was that hard to unravel for you?

SPEAKER_02 14:55

You know, it's been a long process, but I got involved um with the Rudolf Steiner School's Waldorf, and I was really lucky to have a biodynamic farm near me. And we signed up for community supported agricultural membership, and we had a weekly pickup, and I learned a lot from that farmer, a lot about what goes on food. Just because it says it's organic doesn't necessarily mean it's pesticide free. Just because it says it's organic doesn't mean that it's unprocessed, if it's in a jar can or frozen. Um, I started to really look at the work of Weston Price, who noticed that once uh a community or civilization was introduced to processed flowers and sugars, that their health started to deteriorate. And the way that he noticed it first was through the cavitation and the orthodontra of the teeth. So I really started very slowly moving more of my plate over to Whole Foods, farmers market foods, things I would prepare myself. If you saw my kitchen, you'll see I'm drawing apricots right now. I'm making a honey kombucha, I've got uh yogurt uh being made in there too with raw milk. So I prepare a lot of my own foods now as well.

SPEAKER_03 16:19

That that must that's a beautiful journey to go on, though.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

It is, it is. And when you have a community, I would say that is a big key with success, is that there was a community of people of you know, 40 or so families that were part of this. And so the education uh classes that the farmer would put on was all bought into by the group and we'd support each other. And and that's what I do here the support group of other people struggling through this and knowing that there are other individuals that are looking at some of these patterns and looking at changing their life and their diet and trying to titrate off some of these medications. Uh, I had someone last week who told me they're on 14 different medications. That's the most I've ever heard, I think. 14 different meds, because what happens is let's say you're taking a uh oncology medication, a chemotherapy for your cancer, and then you're having gut problems. So now you're taking some sort of a steroid for that to calm your gut, and then you you're on a pain med, and this, you know, it just keeps going down that road or antidepressant. Now you're depressed, and it just keeps building without the physician looking at the contraindications of

Becoming Your Own Health Advocate

SPEAKER_02 17:35

the medication. So it's really about educating people to be their own diagnostician, to be their own advocate in terms of their health, and start researching some of the things that they're doing and asking the hard questions of their doctors.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

What kind of questions should patients be asking their doctors after they get a diagnosis?

SPEAKER_02 17:57

You know, I have a whole chapter in my book about that. There's a gal named Ellen Jacobs. She spells her name similar to mine. It's E-L-Y-N Jacobs. She has a really good set of oncology questions that you would ask your physician, but they transfer over to any type of chronic illness. And that is that if you were going to have this illness, what would you do? You you'd be surprised that most oncologists wouldn't do chemotherapy. They've seen what happens. So they themselves wouldn't necessarily do the chemo. Um, is this an effective therapy for people with this particular diagnosis? Can you give me percentages of people who've gone into remission or have been cured? Uh, can you tell me uh what is in this particular some of these uh chemical pharmaceuticals are petroleum-based or uh very toxic kinds of cleaning type uh pharmaceutical chemicals that were discovered because they were in the process of researching things that were, you know, cleaning uh stainless steel bins, and then they came up and found out that this could kill cancer cells. So it really uh is up to the individual. But I would also recommend considering getting an advocate because sometimes, as a patient of chronic illness, whether it happened to be uh cancer, Crohn's disease, heart disease, it's such an overwhelming diagnosis that it's hard to sift through a lot of the questions you would ask because of the emotional response. So it's nice to have a neutral party sitting next to you asking these questions.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

Yeah, that is important because um, you know, I myself had a diagnosis of POTS, you know, about five years ago. And I had no idea what that meant. All they told me was just increase your salt, you know, drink more water, and threw threw some pills at me, which I, you know it was not the answer for me. And I think looking back, have had I gone in with someone or had someone to talk to outside of that, it would have been more beneficial because an emotional response in that moment with the doctor you want to trust them, you know, but when they just start giving you a pill or like you know, they're not really asking the deep questions that you know they should be asking you. Like you said, about nutrition, about sleep, about community. And so the advocate is a really important piece of this for I think the patient, like you suggested.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

Physicians only have such a limited time. Most oncologists at their appointments with their clients only spend 15 minutes. So when you have such a brief period of time, that's really all they can do is write a prescription, right? They can't sit there and talk to you about your marriage and whether there's conflict in it. They can't talk to you about whether you have any anxiety around your work or your sense of purpose. You know, these are all questions that take uh a lot of time, and that's why the support groups are so helpful. You know, the weekly support groups are about an hour and a half, and so people really share. It feels like an AA meeting, right?

SPEAKER_03 21:07

No, I I I love it though, but it gives you a chance to to digest everything.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

Yeah, exactly. And now we have internet, so you you have access, and I wouldn't necessarily you know diagnose yourself off of the internet or try to uh take whatever the internet tells you to take, but that it can give you a different perspective. It can tell you what in certainly some of these uh medical uh internet sites can tell you what the side effects are that the physician may not necessarily tell you about. And you can ask them is this drug got the side effects of you know, uh interrupting my sleep or changing my sexual activity or uh you know suppressing my diet and my my uh uh sense of appetite. So if the physician doesn't tell you that until you get those symptoms, then you come in and you say, Yeah, I'm not happy. I'm losing all this weight and I don't feel libido any longer. And then they oh well just write you another prescription. Yeah. So it's it's hard once you get entrenched in it, it's much harder to come back out. So I would really recommend for most people to do the research, really be your own uh advocate in the beginning. Look for a group that you can get support from, and then um be careful about your research. It doesn't necessarily mean that that acupuncture is going to be the uh the answer for you. I have seen people wait on a medical diagnosis until it's too late by going to an alternative practitioner, and now the tumor is so big that it can't be surgically removed. So it's about complimentary medicine, it's about teaming up with MDs. And 45% of MDs now are using complimentary medicine either in their practice or referring patients to them. So I think it's it's catching on.

SPEAKER_03 23:04

Do

How America Normalised Medication

SPEAKER_03 23:05

you where do you think we got lost as as Americans being um so dependent on just uh you know, pills and medication and surgeries? Where did we get so detached from like whole foods and really just uh I guess a simpler way to live, a more um intuitive way to live?

SPEAKER_02 23:27

You know, this is a a much longer answer than this, but think about this. You're born, and was who's the first person that you see, whose hands are you do you fall into? Boom, it's the doctor, right? Right. Your first experience as a new human in this body is to uh get pat on the butt by a doctor to get your first vaccines in from your pediatrician, to uh you know, go through uh, and now I see probably the worst uh situation is these children who are uh diagnosed with either autism or ADD ADHD, and they're put on medications so early. The stats are that the earlier you're put on medications, especially for attention deficit or for autism, the more likely it is that you become addicted to a drug, whether it be a recreational drug or a uh a pharmaceutical drug. That's shocking. And so I think the earlier that you start getting medicated, and that could even be antibiotics, by the way, um you end up going down that path of this is the magic bullet. This is gonna fix me. And and some things are pretty miraculous. I mean, if you've got some sort of an infection and you're given a a some sort of an antibiotic and it clears up in a few days, and you've been struggling with this for a couple weeks, that is a pretty impressive uh turnaround. It makes you think that you you should put all your faith there. But this is where I would say your faith needs to be much wider than that. You need to develop your intuition.

SPEAKER_03 25:14

There's room for both. There's room for both. And do you I guess this leads into my next question. Do you think we've gotten addicted to being sick?

SPEAKER_02 25:27

You know, I I do think that whether you want to call it addiction or whether you want to call it normalizing, I think in America we are normalizing. Everybody thinks that just having a constant runny nose or getting ear infections as a child is a normal experience. It's not a normal experience. And I think allergies, there's an example of what people, oh yeah, I'm just having allergies this season. Yeah, yeah, the juniper trees are have pollen, and so I've got allergies. You know, these aren't normal experiences. There's some reason you're having a reaction to the juniper trees. Your liver's probably toxic and clogged. You know, your your lungs probably uh you know need some fresh air. Maybe your water system isn't the cleanest and you're drinking a lot of chlorine. This is this is what I see is this normalization. Everybody thinks a little cough or stuffy nose in a chronic situation where it's long term is just a normal thing and you slough it off, right? Oh, yeah, that my family's always had this. This is this is in my genes. No, I just had a client tell me this, and he was saying, um, so he he had a has had three heart attacks, and he just had to have bypass surgery. And we looked at his diet, and he's been eating fast food. He's worked for the fast food industry, he's a marketer, and so he's been eating two to three meals a day of fast food. Oh my god. And and he's 63 years old. You know, this is relatively young to have three heart attacks and uh the bypass surgery. And so I asked him what he thought caused this, and he says, Oh, it runs in my family. My dad had heart disease. It's like, well, if that's what the excuse you give yourself, why would you ever think a change in your diet is going to do anything for you? So these are the kinds of core beliefs that we have to dispel and really look at

Asking How Symptoms Serve You

SPEAKER_02 27:30

and uncover before you can forgive them and let them go.

SPEAKER_03 27:35

What once the once you receive a diagnosis and say you're in the support groups, what kind of questions should we be asking ourselves after a diagnosis?

SPEAKER_02 27:48

You know, I think the the greatest question that every one of my clients has to ask themselves is how is this serving me? What is this set of symptoms? I I hate to even call it a diagnosis because it makes it sound like it's it's permanent. How are these sets of symptoms serving me? What is the teacher behind this? Why do I feel anxious all the time? When am I feeling anxious? What is it about walking into work every day that puts me in fear? You know, what about that is not serving me? Maybe I have to look at changing professions. Maybe I have to look at changing relationships. What is it about the relationship that is causing me stress, um, creating arguments? Um, what is it about my lifestyle? Maybe I'm uh someone that is, and I see this quite a lot. Maybe I'm um overstressing my body. I've got marathon um uh runners that end up getting sick and they wonder, how could this happen? I'm super healthy. I run marathons. But when you overstress your body, then you can also put your body into uh a kind of a sense of illness, uh, you know, certainly dietarily. I see that people eat a lot of the goo, you know, that runners, that runners eat. So they're eating those major processed foods in order to gain energy. So I think that's the biggest question. How is this serving me? What is it about this illness that's shining a light on my lifestyle, on my relationships, on how I feel about myself? And how can I forgive others and myself for the way that I'm thinking that's creating this anxiety and tension? So I think those are that's probably the biggest lesson you can learn from your set of diagnosis is there some something screaming at you, right? These symptoms are screaming, it's a red light. So listen in. What is what is the red light? Well, when you see that ambulance behind you and the red light is flashing, do you just keep on driving down the road or do you pull over and take a minute? You know? I mean, that's what it's it's doing to you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:14

No, and that's important. I like the way you phrase that. Uh you take the the word diagnosis out of it and replace it with symptoms. Because diagnosis sounds more permanent.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

Right.

unknown 30:25

Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

It gives you a label, right? Because a lot of times these set of symptoms is telling us, ooh, your identity is wrapped around this. Your identity is wrapped around making money at any cost. And so you're spending, you know, 65 hours a week down at the office. What's that about? You're not balanced, right? So it's an identity thing. Changing your identity.

SPEAKER_03 30:51

Yeah, because every time you go to a doctor, it's like you have this, you have this, you have this. Instead of, you know, what is it trying to teach me?

SPEAKER_02 31:00

And yeah, what physician tells you, hey, you're really whole and complete and everything's fine, and you're you're really just um got a set of symptoms here that are waking you up. Why don't we remove the barriers to that? Because you're complete the way you are. And that's what homeostasis is, if you've ever heard the term. It's that the body knows how to heal itself. The body's a miraculous thing, it knows what perfect harmony is. So, what are the blocks that you're putting in its way? And it could be food, it could be the job, it could be the water you're drinking, it could be the you know, relationships that you're in. You do have uh estrangement with your children. Are you angry at your parents, even though they're dead? Are you still pissed off? Do you still tell the same old story, right?

SPEAKER_03 31:48

Yeah, yeah. And what do this is kind of interesting to me, what do all those, I don't want to say negative emotions, but those heavy emotions like resentment or anger do to the body?

SPEAKER_02 32:01

Well, you know, I I categorize it in that there's two types of uh symptoms or or dis uh ease, dys-hyphen ease in the body. You've either got uh things that really confront you face to face right away, and those are the hot diseases, those are the diseases of like colds and flus and sneezing and coughing and diarrhea and things in which you you you hear pretty quickly that there's something going on and you take uh stock in it and you really look at what's what's happening, and you might mask it with a drug before you see that it's something like anger or resentment or anxiety. Or if you push it down hard enough and long enough and really shove that anger and resentment down, and you say, Oh, oh, it's just an allergy, oh, it's just a you know reaction to this uh dinner I had over at the Mexican food restaurant. If you do that and shove it down hard enough and long enough, it becomes a cold disease. And those are the diseases that become super chronic, the tumors, right? The the Parkinson's diseases, the blockages in your arteries. That's a disease that is much more serious. And and you know, there's a phrase that is used in Buddhist groups that um uh you may or may not have heard, and that is anger is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. Yeah. So yeah, it's uh anger's a big thing.

SPEAKER_03 33:38

And that's it's amazing what I've seen these emo heavy emotions do to those around me who you know, they they they suck it in, they suck it in, and then they end up in the hospital, heart attack. You know, something does eventually happen with a body, I don't want to say breaks, but it's like let you know hey, you know, there's something here we need to deal with.

Why Carrot Juice Isn’t Enough

SPEAKER_03 34:06

So I want to talk a little bit about your book. And I like the I like the title. Um It takes more than carrot juice. What what is where did that title come from?

SPEAKER_02 34:19

Um I studied under Charlotte Gerson for the Gerson therapy. Their institute is in San Diego, but their clinic is in Mexico because their uh methods are uh not what an oncologist would but a lot of cancer patients go to those uh clinics down south of the border. So the Gerson program focuses on 13 glasses of fresh juice a day, many of them carrot juices. And so um I employed that program with many of my clients. And as we worked with the support groups, we found that a lot of people would uh practice this program perfectly, right? And yet, uh a cancer that's supposed to be highly effective uh with this particular type of therapy, which is mostly digestive cancers, by the way, colon cancer, you know, intestinal cancer, carcinoma, um, weren't uh having the healing reactions that they wanted. And yet, as we started to expand our perspective of healing and see that a lot of this was in your mind, a lot of your blocks were about changing mindset or changing core beliefs or forgiving. You know, an example would be I had a woman who had an intestinal carcinoma. Um, small intestine tumors would come up every few months, she'd have to get them surgically removed. She was going through surgeries every four to six months. As we started working in the support groups, it came out that she was just really angry at her son because he admitted he was gay. And she was a fundamentalist who believed that that was a sin. And she cut off a relationship with him. And here she was having these tumors that started at the same time that she cut off the relationship. And so, as we explored this, the husband went forward and invited the son to dinner and they healed their relationship. And he ended up uh getting a partner that helped him adopt children, and the the two of them adopted a child. This woman's life transformed. She loved her grandchildren, healed her relationship with her son, and the tumor stopped forming. And so that's an example, maybe, of of how that can happen.

SPEAKER_03 36:34

That's a beautiful story.

SPEAKER_02 36:37

Yeah, so that's why it takes more than carrot juice, is about how people realize that if you just stick with the diet, you may not get the kind of uh transformation that the body's calling for.

SPEAKER_03 36:50

That you do need to do some internal work as well.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

Yeah, internal as in soul spirit work, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 36:58

Yeah. And like we talked about, like the support groups and asking ourselves questions, uh, like how are these some what are how how are these sets of symptoms serving me?

SPEAKER_02 37:09

And I I have a set of uh exercises in the book that not only have many of my patients brought to me and said, Hey, here's what I use to turn this pancreatic cancer diagnosis around, but also things that we would do in our support groups based on the work of Jerry Jamkowski at the Attitudinal Healing Center or Bruce Lipton through Biology of Belief. Uh, you know, some of these uh doctors who've been working with cancer for a long time, um, you know, Love Medicine and Miracles by Bernie Siegel. So a lot of these exercises are taken from uh MDs that have used some of these alternative methods to help people heal their minds.

SPEAKER_03 37:52

And you mentioned working um that both, you know, I don't want to say for lack of a better word, like Eastern and Western can work together, like holistic and medical can work together. Do you think that it can it can ever do you think it has to be one or the other in the grand scheme of things? Or is the the combined effort the most successful effort?

SPEAKER_02 38:18

You know what one of the other stories I tell in my book is about a woman who was an organic gardener and and she had lung cancer. And upon her diagnosis, she wanted to do it completely holistically. That was her her commitment. And she ate perfectly, beautifully, and the tumors did shrink, but they were still there five years later. So she went in and talked to her physician, and he said, you know, these are really operable now. We could take care of this. Let's just go in and take them out. And so, even though it was against her philosophy at the time, she realized, hey, I just hit 70. I think I'm gonna go ahead and do this. And that was the best thing she could have ever done. So she combined the two. She she worked initially on changing her diet, but then she went in and she took the surgery and removed it, and she's still with us, and she's like 78 years old.

SPEAKER_03 39:07

Oh, God bless her.

SPEAKER_02 39:09

Yeah. So I think the combination is really effective for many people. I would never, you know one of the best things Western medicine does is we have diagnostic tools that you can use to find out whether the tumors are still there. There's blood tests that can tell you what type of cancer. So I think that you can work hand in hand with your physician. And again, I'm not giving medical advice, and I really, really specifically say that in the beginning of my book. I am not an MD. I don't give medical advice. I just help people to see deeper past their illness and what it's telling them, and then take the steps that are necessary for their own individual path to do everything you can to not only eat the way Mother Nature intended it, but listen to the higher voice on what's needed. And if the oncologist is is uh you know telling you that you need this and you really trust this oncologist and you really like the research you've done about what uh the answer is from that perspective, do what you need to do. That's great.

SPEAKER_03 40:12

And do you think I'm curious because every time you know you open social media, you unfortunately see someone else who's sick, you know, with cancer.

SPEAKER_02 40:21

And 2.5 million people, by the way. 2.5 million people are diagnosed with cancer in America a year.

SPEAKER_03 40:29

Wow, I didn't realize that number was so high.

SPEAKER_02 40:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:33

Do you think what are your views, I should say, on people putting it out there into the world that they're sick? Do you think that makes it worse as far as kind of owning that diagnosis as a as a large part of your identity?

SPEAKER_02 40:48

I think it depends on the way you do it, right? So I I talk in my book, I talk about this this uh uh client. I will call him Michael. I've changed all the names in the book, but I call him Michael, and he really identified with his cancer. He used to call my cancer. Well, my cancer is this, and my cancer is that, and my cancer is helping me do this, and my cancer is now really causing me this. And so I really asked him, why are you calling it my cancer? Your ownership of this disease is so insidious that you've taken it on as a identity, like a lab coat. You wear it like a lab coat. And so I think that if if that's how you identify and you're getting a lot of sympathy and you're getting a lot of attention as a result, that could be deadly. I think if you look at it in a different way, and that is that wow, I've got these set of symptoms that have now resulted in this particular diagnosis according to this physician. I can really help people. I can first look at it and what it's teaching me, and then I can really help people. I can't tell you how many people have come into the support groups and ended up becoming coaches, in a sense, to other people and help them push through things. So I think it's really how deeply that identification takes hold of you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:08

And I think sometimes, you know, when you have thousands of people, you know, kind of reinforcing it sometimes in the comments and the likes and the views. I don't know if that's specifically healthy for us either.

SPEAKER_02 42:22

Yeah, and I I know what you're talking about. I see that, and you you can see how much sympathy sometimes people get from all of the the comments. And it's it what I prefer is if if it was me and I was one of those people that initially started out, you know, announcing to the world that I have cancer. I think over the course of my the transformation of the way I look at it, that I would eventually admit, wow, this isn't me. This isn't my diagnosis. I am not this. I am really whole. I am really a complete healed being. And I put a couple little obstacles in my path that I need help removing. And so I'm putting out there to all of you, I'd really like to take a look at this. I've got a little bit of a addiction to alcohol. I've got a relationship that is pulling me down and making me depressed, and I'm not able to handle it. Or I really want to learn how to communicate with my children. They haven't talked to me in years. So once you can identify that there are these things that are keeping you from peace, you can ask others for help and then you could extend help.

SPEAKER_03 43:31

And I like the way you said that. You know, you can ask for you can ask for help and you can extend help. It's all in the way that you put it out there into the world.

SPEAKER_02 43:40

Exactly. Giving and receiving are the same.

SPEAKER_03 43:43

And that kind of leads me into my next question, which you which you kind of answered is how important it is how we talk to ourselves while we're going through these symptoms.

SPEAKER_02 43:51

Well, and this is why I do recommend meditation. Whether you're using meditation just to calm yourself down so your nervous system is listening to. The healing messages that are being transmitted, or whether that uh self-talk needs to have a much deeper purpose behind the meditation, and that is uh handing everything over to source. I mean, the this book is a spiritual book. It is about uh that when you're faced with these things, nothing happens by accident. There's always a reason behind it. So find the deeper reason, and then when you can't understand what it's being given to you for, turn it over to your higher self. Let source figure it out. Yeah. You know, eventually an answer will come up, right? You'll meet somebody in the grocery store then that you know has the answer for you.

SPEAKER_03 44:43

Well, that's not a thing. Like, I feel like in this culture we've gotten where we need the answer right now, like instantaneously. Right. And like, you know, like people like to play Dr. Google, and you know, you know, they end up like, you know, doom scrolling your whole night because you've terrified yourself thinking you have something that you don't have, and you've set yourself on a very unhealthy pattern, very dark hole to go down.

SPEAKER_02 45:10

Yeah. Yeah, and I and I don't want to give the impression that I have figured it all out. I have not. So you know, something will come up and I'll get into a financial pinch or I'll I'll have an argument with a sibling or something. And what I would say is that the more work you do on the inner self, the the shorter the time period is from the upset to the forgiveness. Whereas you might hold a grudge for years, you know, but now you hold a grudge for a few hours and then you pick up the phone and you say, Hey, I am so sorry. That was so ridiculous. And we argued over, you know, decorating my bedroom.

SPEAKER_03 45:52

It's amazing what we'll fight over and hold grudges again. It's usually something like so silly. Yeah, yeah, it is. Umone

Survival Plans And Purpose

SPEAKER_03 46:00

first comes to you. I want to talk a little bit about uh your your coaching. Uh when someone first first comes to you and they've received, you know, um the set of symptoms that they're presented with, what is your first step with them?

SPEAKER_02 46:16

Step is I have them read through what I do so that they don't come in unprepared. I let them know that this is definitely a nutritional journey, and that's usually why people are referred to me. And so we are going to look at diet, but that this is much deeper than that. And so if you don't think you're ready to do that work, you might want to consider uh another practitioner because I do require them to come to their support groups initially. And that can be very confrontational with people. So I give them uh an intake and they ask, you know, I ask pretty deep questions about their relationships with their spouses or their kids or, you know, what uh emotions they feel on a regular basis, what triggers them. So they they're they don't go into this uh blindly. And then once once that happens, we take a look at their uh core belief archetype. I there's seven core beliefs around eating that I like to look at and find out where it is that you might have a block because you know I'm not I'm not inexpensive. So if you're gonna pay a few thousand dollars to someone, um, you want to have an effect. And if you uh just hand them a menu plan and a shopping list, it doesn't mean that they're going to be able to complete it. A lot of them have so many core issues. So we complete a little quiz about the seven archetypes of eating. And usually these archetypes uncover other uh core beliefs, not just about food, but how they've been living their life. And and then I, you know, I make them write letters of forgiveness to people, even if they're parents who've passed away, that kind of thing. Um, you know, or or we look at uh kind of the, you know, where is your support group in your life, not just the one that they come to weekly at my uh place, but where are you getting support for who you are? And we start to to create and craft um a new identity. And it's mostly dropping away maybe the old paradigms of who they thought they were. Kind of like pulling back an onion. Yeah, you know, everyone's addicted to something, right? It might you might not think so because it seems like an acceptable addiction, right? Right. Um, but a lot of people need to look at it. I mean, a lot a lot of this doom scrolling is unbelievable. The negativity that people who are really into kind of the political doom scrolling and you have to know what's going on in Iran and all upset at the president, and why didn't they pass this bill? And oh my God, you know, it it does something to you. You talk about anger. If that's how you're you're filling your brain with those thoughts, it's very, very difficult to leave room for healing.

SPEAKER_03 49:03

Yeah, because it's it's occupying a lot of space, not only you know, mentally and emotionally, but spiritually. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 49:11

And so once we have that plan for them, and and I do put together a a survival plan for them. And then we go from survival to thriving, and then that's a thriver plan. So we're just gonna get you through these next few weeks so you don't freak out because a lot of people, it's very confrontational to look at everything at once. So you got to go slow, and then we eventually move into when they they realize what's their bucket list. What do you what do you want to live for? What do you want to stick around for? And we put together that list and we start to check it off.

SPEAKER_03 49:45

I like that from survival to thriver. I like that. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 49:50

Yeah, what I had a I was gonna let tell you this one story. Uh, I had a pancreatic cancer patient. She was 70, and um pancreatic's pretty serious. It's uh, you know, diagnosis to uh death date is usually about three months, and she wanted to see her grandson graduate and get accepted to college, and that was two years down the road. He was, you know, beginning his junior year in high school. And so we put together her list based on wanting to be there for graduation, and she was, she made it, you know. She didn't make it much past that, I think about three weeks after the graduation date, but she made it, you know, two years and three months. Yeah. Uh you know, so sometimes it takes that purpose um to be able to see why I am here.

SPEAKER_03 50:40

No, that that's powerful because pancreatic cancer usually is very silent and you don't get a lot of symptoms. It usually takes you pretty correct. Yeah. I I don't want to keep you too much longer. You've been so gracious with your time. But what is your hope for this book?

SPEAKER_02 51:00

You know, I wrote this book um really about eight years ago. I put the shell together and then got very involved with my practice here and life happens, and I kind of put it on a shelf. Um, but I picked it back up, and this is gonna sound odd, but I picked it back up because I was at a workshop where the workshop uh guides, the facilitators, brought in a medium, a psychic, and he walked right over to me and said, Oh my gosh, you've got a book that's been in the hopper for almost 10 years. You need to write that. What did you talk about? So I thought I I saw that as a call and I opened up back uh the the word doc and went through it and said, Yeah, I I do need to write this. I really got to get that out there. And uh so I I went to Costa Rica for a month and sat down in a yurt and just finished filling it out and uh looked at the the people I needed to get permission from to use some of the material like Jerry Japelski's book or Michael Poland's quotes or things like that. And then I uh started sending out the the requests for permission and they came right back. You'd be surprised how many people are just fine. Oh yeah, use it in its entirety. Um and then when I got home, it was it was ready to publish, and I got an editor to go through it and then uh put it into the format. So I I just felt like there was a calling for it. I felt like, you know, with 76% of Americans with a chronic illness that people probably needed to look deeper than their pharmaceutical prescription.

SPEAKER_03 52:39

No, I think there's definitely a place for this. Um and uh my last question for you would be if you could leave us with one thing today, what would you like to leave us with?

SPEAKER_02 52:51

I would say take responsibility. Don't leave it to any practitioner. I whether it is a holistic practitioner or your oncologist or your pediatrician for your kids, take responsibility. Look at what is this screaming at you. Something is a message, everything's a message. So, what's the message? How can you help transform this? How can you transform yourself through this? That's I think that's the biggest message, and it certainly is the biggest message of the book, but uh that's the the message that creates true healing.

SPEAKER_03 53:29

No, I like that because that is so profound. So often we put our healing in other people's hands. Um it's not their responsibility. No. Is there uh is there a quote or anything that you apply to your daily life as you're doing your work?

SPEAKER_02 53:44

Uh, you know, I would say um there's certainly longer poems, and I, you know, The Road Not Taken is kind of my poem of choice. Two roads diverge in a yellow wood, and sorry, I was but one traveler there. I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth, but took the other as just as fair at having perhaps a better claim, for it was grassy and wanted wear. And as for that, the passing there had warned them really about the same. That's a Robert Frost poem. But I think that you have to look at that in your life. Is it are you going down that same old monotonous road or are you gonna take a different path and wake up?

SPEAKER_03 54:23

I think that's a beautiful place to end. And I'd like to thank you for your time today, Dr. McLeod, uh, for sharing your insight with us. Um to continue the conversation and to explore uh Dr. McLeod's work further and even book a free consultation, head over to her website, SedonaSolution.com. There you can also find details on her retreats, her events, and of course, purchase her book. It takes more than carrot juice. Um, and Dr. McCloud is also active on Facebook and Instagram, and all those links uh will uh will be in the show notes. And as always, you can find me in the Call Her Cat podcast on all major platforms, and check the show notes for our link tree where you can connect with the show. And there will also be a link to to Dr. McCloud's uh website, and from the website, like I mentioned, um you can purchase her book as well. Uh follow us on social media for clips and updates. And until next time, remember this uh you don't have to carry what you came from and keep telling your story because you'll never know who you're actually helping. And we will see you all next time.