The Essential Role of Minerals for Peak Performance I Lisa Pitel-Killah

Speaker A: 00:00:00

I ended up coming across a friend who was a practitioner, and she said, you know, why haven't you tested your hair? And I was like, what are you talking about? What do you mean, test my hair? Test my hair for what? She's like, no, no.

There's a test called Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis. Htma. You can test your hair and then figure out what you're deficient in in your body because there are a lot of people that don't feel stressed.

But that ratio tells us a different story.

Speaker B: 00:00:19

Welcome to the Optimized Woman, the podcast.

Speaker C: 00:00:21

For high performing women ready to take back their health. I'm Orshi McNaughton, a board certified holistic.

Speaker B: 00:00:27

Health practitioner and functional nutritionist.

Speaker C: 00:00:30

If you're tired of feeling stuck, you can't lose the weight. No matter what you do, your energy is in the toilet, your metabolism feels.

Speaker B: 00:00:37

Like it's at a standstill, and you.

Speaker C: 00:00:39

Lost the spark you once had, Then.

Speaker B: 00:00:41

You'Re in the right place.

Speaker C: 00:00:42

We are here to unleash the unstoppable.

Speaker B: 00:00:44

Force you meant to be and give.

Speaker C: 00:00:46

You the tools to fix what's holding you back. So if you're ready to own it.

Speaker B: 00:00:50

Start thriving again, and live the life you deserve. And let's get to it. Hey. Welcome, friends.

Speaker C: 00:01:01

Today I'm joined by Lisa Patel Killa, a world champion kettlebell sports athlete and internationally recognized expert in hair tissue mineral analysis. In this episode, we dive deep into the intricate connections between mineral imbalances, hormones, and overall health.

Lisa explains how HTMA testing can reveal hidden patterns of stress, adrenal dysfunctions, and even heavy metal toxicity.

Offering insights that go far beyond traditional blood work, they discuss critical topics like copper, iron metabolism, and a role of minerals in thyroid and adrenal health.

So whether you're dealing with fatigue, hormonal imbalances, or simply want to unlock your full potential, this episode offers the tools and knowledge to take your health to the next level. So let's dive right in.

Speaker A: 00:01:48

When I was three years old, I was on the rink learning how to skate and just absolutely fell in love with it.

Speaker B: 00:01:54

Spent.

Speaker A: 00:01:55

Spent 35 years skating, or actually probably a bit more. I think it was about 37 when I finally. When I finally kind of hung up the skates from a competitive standpoint.

When I went away to university, I joined. They call it what used to be called precision skating, but now it's called synchronized skating.

So I was on a synchronized skating team for many, many years. And yeah, just loved being active.

I was an avid runner, did a number of half marathons and you know, in that being a bit of a type A personality, I was always, you know, an entrepreneur and opening business and kind of taking on more challenges. And throughout my life, I mean, really, really pushed myself hard mentally. And I think a lot of athletes go through that, right?

Even if they're not an entrepreneur and ended up in burnout, right? I kind of hit it and I was like, oh my gosh, what have I done to myself?

I remember driving home from the gym one day and I was doing some circuit training and I grabbed my shake on the way out and I was all set. I'm driving home and I had about a 20 minute drive and man, on the way home I was almost falling asleep.

And I'm like, there's something really wrong with me, right? Like I. I've done a number on myself at this point.

And so I kind of, I dialed everything back and thought, okay, you know what, I need to really start taking care of myself and looking at my health.

And I have always been interested in health and fitness and, you know, making sure I'm eating properly and doing all the right things and all the therapies. And, you know, I really enjoy kind of digging into all that.

So at that point in time, it was a real kind of reflection period for myself to say, you know, how am I going to get through this and how am I going to. How am I going to bring myself back to where I know I can be right?

And so that was kind of around the period when I stopped skating and kind of gave that up. And I knew I needed to take some time, like downtime a little bit. And so, you know, still had to work and do things like that.

But I really approached my health a bit differently and I was a lot more self aware. And that self awareness brought about a lot of openings within myself as well with regards to trauma and other things I kind of been carrying around.

And so I did work for a very long period of time kind of detoxing different pathogens. I mean, I went through a parasite protocol. I had H. Pylori. I then had C. Difficile toxin. A.

You know, I kind of went down the road of all these GI issues that came to the surface at the same time as I was going through my healing journey. And you know, the whole time I did that.

One of the really cool things that I implemented that I do share quite often with people now that are going through tough times like that that really still want to be active is I did some powerlifting.

I hired a coach for myself I learned how to do it properly, and I actually used that type of training to kind of bring myself back from that adrenal burnout and into a bit of a better place. And that's when I ended up going back into kettlebells when I started feeling better.

And kind of throughout that process, though, what I was really trying to focus on was, what can I do to really kind of get my health back on track? And throughout that process, I ended up coming across a friend who was a practitioner, and she said, you know, why haven't you tested your hair?

And I was like, what are you talking about? What do you mean, test my hair? Test my hair for what? She's like, no, no. There's a test called Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis. Htma.

You can test your hair and then figure out what you're deficient in in your body. Because at the time that I was having this conversation, I was still struggling with chronic fatigue a little bit. Right.

I knew it wasn't quite there yet, but I was also estrogen dominant constantly. I took all the dim and indole, three carbinol that you can imagine, and all the, you know, the inhibitors.

Speaker D: 00:05:17

Right.

Speaker A: 00:05:18

To try and get that down. And I just couldn't budget.

Speaker B: 00:05:20

I'm sorry, what age were you during this time?

Speaker A: 00:05:24

So I was in my late 30s, early 40s. As I was going through this.

Speaker B: 00:05:28

Okay, that is what a specific time that so many women are struggling with exactly the same issue. Right?

Speaker A: 00:05:34

Absolutely.

Speaker D: 00:05:35

Right.

Speaker A: 00:05:36

And, yeah. And so after I tested my hair, I had a consultation with Dr. Malter. So if anybody is familiar with H2ME, you definitely know who Dr. Malta is.

And he was like, you're copper toxic. And I was like, what's that? And then everything. And we can touch on that today. But that was. Everything came to the surface.

And I thought, oh, my gosh, if I'd only found this test earlier, you know what?

How would I have been able to help myself and be in a bit of a different position than all the protocols I had to go through and all the fixing I had to do? So that was really a realization for me.

And, yeah, I mean, once I found mineral balancing, I definitely changed a lot of those main issues that I was having. And I'll tell you, kind of at the height of that, after I started mobilizing copper, bringing it back to the surface, and being able to utilize that.

That for energy, that's when I won kind of the grand total of the. Of the world championship. So the world championships of kettlebell sport. There's a Few different disciplines, we won't go down that road.

But there are different weight classes similar to what you would see in weightlifting.

Speaker D: 00:06:32

Right.

Speaker A: 00:06:32

In the Olympics. And so in kettlebell sport, though, it's interesting because you can compete in a bracket of your own age group.

So in my own age group for the three years that I attended, I won each time, but I never won the open Cate.

So after mineral balancing for a number of years, I actually brought home the gold in the open category when I was 45, I beat women who were half my age.

Speaker B: 00:06:53

That's incredible.

Speaker A: 00:06:54

Yeah. And I felt amazing doing it.

Speaker D: 00:06:56

Right.

Speaker A: 00:06:56

And I knew I was like, wow, this is. And then that's really when my world changed because I just.

I knew there was something here that really could help people because, you know, I had done all the diagnostic tests, right. I had done I don't even know how many different diagnostic tests.

And it was really hair that told me what was kind of happening at that deeper level in my body that I really needed to fix and dig into, which is exactly what I did.

Speaker B: 00:07:20

So.

Speaker A: 00:07:20

So yeah. And then. And here I am, never looking back.

Speaker B: 00:07:24

There'S one thing you mentioned, and I want to drill down into this topic a little bit more later, which is copper toxicity, which really what you meant is bio unavailable copper, but I don't want people to take it away that we don't need copper and things like that. So I definitely want to go into that topic in a little bit. But before we go into the nuance of that, can you just tell us what is HCMA testing?

Just on the basic level, how is that different from like blood work and urine and saliva tests and what type of imbalances can it show us that is different from these other tests?

Speaker A: 00:07:59

Yeah.

So with regards to hair, it's an interesting test because it really does give us a bit of a history, if you will, where we're looking at a specific sample. So if the sample is about an inch long, you're going to get about four, three months of data or so.

So it's really interesting to look at that deep level in the body. And we're looking at a cellular level because it's picking up different fluids outside of blood. Right.

And minerals that are depositing in the hair deposited specific patterns. So there's a lot of information that we can gather from it. And it's different than blood labs just because blood labs are a snapshot in time.

And what I like to do is use both.

Speaker D: 00:08:35

Right.

Speaker A: 00:08:35

Because blood labs really work well when you're testing the hair. But one of the things that blood labs can miss is if we're in a period where the body really wants to be in balance, right?

Blood always wants to be in homeostasis, so it wants to be imbalance. It wants to have things within the reference ranges, if you will.

And so at that point, what the blood's going to do is if it's high in something such as calcium, right, it can deposit it in tissues and be in higher concentrations there and actually push it out of the blood to keep that in balance. So. And these are the things that we pick up in the hair, right? Those deposits and deficits.

So it's interesting what you can see in the hair with regards to imbalances that may even preemptively tell you about things that may come in the future, that person may struggle with.

Speaker B: 00:09:18

I think that's one thing I want to put a fine point on, is this difference in functional testing. That when you go and get your blood work done, it's a moment in time of what your blood work shows.

When you do your saliva cortisol test, it's a moment in time of what your cortisol levels are.

When you do your poop test and you're testing your GI, right, that is your microbiome, you know, reflecting maybe the last 24 hours of what you were eating and everything else but the hair. It's almost like an archeological record of your last several months. And that is such a goldmine of information, right?

Because we don't have too many other tools in functional medicine when we can kind of look back on your history and see those imbalances, not just like how you are in this moment. Can you speak to that a little bit more? Because I think that's what makes this test such an incredible tool in our toolkit.

Speaker A: 00:10:15

Well, and, you know, it is an incredible thing. And I'll say that a lot of times we are seeing a lot of history in that hair, too.

And even when you think about what the body or how the body responds to stress and trauma, right?

And we can pick up specific patterns even knowing what something happened, maybe even 10 or 15 years ago, if that person whose pattern is showing us a trauma pattern, they may have kind of filtered that away and not dealt with it. Because emotions, mindset, have a lot to do with mineral balance, too, right?

And so the more that we kind of hinder ourselves holding on to some of those things, the more that it can also upset our systems. And the hair can really kind of tell us about that.

And you Know, one of the most, I think one of the most telltale ratios, because there's seven ratios that tell us more about the systems of the body too. But one of the ratios that's really interesting is the sodium to potassium ratio. So we know how important sodium and potassium are for the body.

We've got sodium potassium pumps. They're what exchanges ions to have our cells have energy, right?

But when that ratio gets elevated due to stressors and traumatic experiences and things like that, there are certain implications of that.

Now why I think it's so interesting isn't whether it's high or low or what the ratio really is, but it's what it represents when someone doesn't necessarily have awareness of themselves. And so I'll give you a simple example.

If you have one person that has a to do list with, you know, 10 things, or let's say 15, 15 things on it, they go, yeah, I can do that in an hour. And another person that's like, oh my gosh, that I. This is too much for me, right?

The person who is not kind of taken back by that to do list may actually be more stressed than they realize because again, they're not quite as aware as maybe the other person is to implement those two to do lists.

And so the stress ratio really brings to light for clinicians and practitioners that are using it for implementation to be able to tell you a little bit more about that person if they're lacking that self awareness to know how much stress they're actually kind of putting onto themselves. So that's why I think that ratio is so critical and so interesting, because people don't.

There are a lot of people that don't feel stressed, but that ratio tells us a different story.

Speaker B: 00:12:28

Maybe you can describe to our audience who is not watching this, what kind of data do we get from the Heritage Analysis test?

And there's so much nuance to interpreting this data, as you mentioned, it's not just the levels that we are looking at of different minerals, but the ratios. And those ratios indicate certain body systems maybe being out of balance.

And there's so much expertise and training that needs to be in place for somebody to really be able to give good clinical advice.

So first of all, can you speak to the fact that there's so many types of hair tests and that there's only so many that we consider really viable tests and that you also want to be going to a practitioner like Lisa who really knows what they are doing and can interpret this correctly and then put together the right protocols for you. Can you talk a little bit about the nuance of test interpretation?

Speaker A: 00:13:29

Yeah. Let's start off by what the test measures and some of the important facts about the lab.

The lab that a lot of practitioners will use is called Trace Elements Lab. There's another one called Analytical Research Labs. They're both in the United States and there's a few others as well. Analytical Research Labs.

They're going to test about 20 different elements. Trace elements test 37. So somewhere between kind of 20 to 40 elements is usually the common theme between labs.

And one of the most important parts is what do they do with the hair when it arrives at the lab? That is a key point.

And so there should be a standard protocol in place where the hair is simply rinsed with distilled or reverse osmosis water and then tested. There are some labs, though, that will chemically wash the hair.

Now, the problem with that is that it strips the hair of vital minerals like sodium and potassium specifically, can affect other ones too. But those are the two main ones. And I just talked about how important the sodium to potassium ratio is.

Speaker D: 00:14:27

Right.

Speaker A: 00:14:28

So if we don't have proper numbers for those levels, it makes it really hard for us to know exactly, you know, how that person's body is actually functioning. And so that's a critical factor. You want to make sure you choose a really good lab. You want to make sure they don't chemically wash the hair.

You also want to make sure they don't ask you to submit the hair sample in plastic or foil or anything like that. It should be put into a plain white paper envelope so there's no contamination from external factors. With obviously, the submission.

Now, the interpretation is a little more difficult than most diagnostic tests because we've got this mineral wheel and all these interactions to. To consider.

Speaker D: 00:15:07

Right.

Speaker A: 00:15:07

So, you know, critical thinking for practitioners and clinicians using HTMA is paramount. Understanding that magnesium affects calcium, understanding that the lack of magnesium affects calcification in the body.

Speaker D: 00:15:19

Right.

Speaker A: 00:15:19

And even knowing what those represent. So really understanding, you know, where does the mineral sit?

If it sits outside the cell, in that extracellular space, then there's a way to read those particular types of minerals. If it sits in the intracellular, there's a different way to interpret them on the test and then looking at the relationships together.

So it is, again, as you mentioned, orsi really important to have someone interpret the test that understands the test.

Speaker D: 00:15:43

Right.

Speaker A: 00:15:43

It's not straightforward like blood labs.

Speaker B: 00:15:46

And then also some markers can appear to be high on the test, but we could be actually in a loss pattern. And then, as you said, we could have things that bioaccumulate and build up. We can have certain minerals that are high but not bioavailable.

And you need the nuance of understanding the ratios and kind of looking at the patterns in a certain way. Maybe we could start by talking about, first of all, is why minerals are important as building blocks of our health.

And then what are these typical patterns that you tend to see on the test? Because we fall into usually two or three different patterns.

Speaker A: 00:16:26

Yeah. So with regards to, I mean, some of the more common patterns, I would say that there's really four.

And, you know, loosely, if you would have asked me nine months ago, I would have said three. But in the past nine months, almost a year, we've been seeing one more pattern emerge a lot.

And so a lot of times what happens is the patterns are someone's journey. And there really is. I get asked this a lot. It's like, where should I be in a pattern? Where's the best pattern to be?

And in the grand scheme of things, that doesn't necessarily really exist. What you want to have is a body that is stress resilient, where the adrenals are working well, the thyroid's functioning well.

Speaker D: 00:17:06

Right.

Speaker A: 00:17:06

And the person feels good. That's the ultimate end goal.

So you can be in any pattern along the way, and depending on how you're treating the pattern and how your lifestyle is affecting that, you can be experiencing just those things. And so really, there's four main patterns. One is fast oxidation, and fast oxidation really represented.

If we want to know what the levels look like, it's just represented by visually a low calcium, a low magnesium, and then a high sodium and high potassium on the test. Fast oxidation. As children come into the world, they're all born as fast oxidizers.

Fast oxidation also means that our thyroid and adrenals are a bit overactive. Sometimes it can get to its extreme points as well.

The other pattern that's common, which is what we call more of a transitional pattern, is a 4 lows pattern.

Speaker B: 00:17:50

So before you go there, can you just mention the fast. Like, what are the typical signs of sort of symptoms that you could may notice that you may be in that pattern of fast oxidizer. Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:18:01

So fast oxidizers tend to be, again, if the pattern isn't really extreme, tend to detox a little bit better. They tend to be considered what we call good eliminators.

So if we have metals in our environment or if we have toxins that we are Exposed to the body tends to be able to detox those fairly quickly. So body's a bit more stress, resilient, a little bit more joyful. These people are a little bit more extroverted, right?

And so they're, they're just a little bit more fast moving, fast paced. They've usually have good energy, which is kind of the opposite of one of the other patterns.

And as people kind of move into, let's say we've got stressors on board, right?

Somebody in vast oxidation, they're feeling pretty good, and then all of a sudden they hit a point where maybe they picked up a parasite or maybe they've got financial stress or work stress, and the stress is kind of getting them down.

That's sometimes when they kind of end up in that 4 lows pattern, or they still may have a little bit of energy kicking around, but now they're, they're kind of burning through more minerals because the body's under a lot of stress. And as soon as we're stressed, we need our minerals on board to be able to keep everything going.

You asked with regards to the foundation, and so I have a couple of fun examples. One of the ones that people can think about is Dr. Henry Schroeder shared with us decades ago. Minerals are the spark plugs of life, right?

If the car doesn't have spark plugs, it doesn't start, right? I like to call it the foundation of our, of our health, right? So think of the foundation of your home.

If that foundation is really strong and there's no leaks and cracks and holes and things like that, we have a good solid foundation to stand on and minerals coming into the picture really kind of start that foundation. And then everything else you do is kind of building on that. Now if somebody starts to run out of energy.

So the complete opposite of fast oxidation is slow. And so slow oxidizers tend to have kind of a shift in a pattern where the sodium and potassium are lower and the calcium and magnesium are higher.

Visually, of course. Now one of the things that you said earlier, you know, loss patterns.

So a lot of times when we see somebody with high calcium on a test, which means there could be calcification in the tissues, right? In the fashion the musculature, it could be many different places in the brain.

And so when we have magnesium visually elevated, it's actually a deficiency because it's in a loss pattern. The calcium is, is antagonizing it, right?

So people with a high magnesium and high calcium level on the test usually do actually need magnesium supply support.

Speaker D: 00:20:22

Right.

Speaker A: 00:20:23

Now, these people, the slow oxidizers, which is a lot of us, a lot of the population, right. It.

They're more in a place of a little bit more introverted, a little bit, maybe less joyful, depending the higher the calcium gets, the more blunted our emotions get. So if you have somebody with really high tissue calcification and it's visual on the test, they may be very blah, right. They don't really feel joy.

They're not really extroverted. They don't really want to be socially interactive. They would rather stay home, watch a movie, and kind of just stay quiet.

Speaker D: 00:20:53

Right.

Speaker B: 00:20:54

Before you go any further, can you just briefly talk about what a calcium shell is so people get an idea of that too?

Speaker A: 00:21:00

Absolutely, yeah. So what happens is magnesium really is a gatekeeper for calcium, right? Calcium tends to. To be, I always call it goes a little rogue, right.

When it has the opportunity to do so. And so if magnesium is missing, which magnesium is the first mineral called upon in the stress response pattern in the body.

So if we have a stressor of any kind, whether it's internal or external, our body's going to call upon more magnesium.

So think about a lot of times if you have an acute stressor or a tough day at work and then all of a sudden you're constipated, that's magnesium deficiency, right. So as the body becomes more deficient in magnesium due to stressors and things like that, calcium tends to go a little bit rogue.

And so when it gets to be chronic calcification, the tissues can be extremely, extremely high. And we call this a calcium shell. And I always think about it. You know, I used to talk about it years ago, talking about like a moat around a castle.

It was just like kind of keeping you inside, right. And, and kind of shutting you off from. From the world, if, if you will.

Speaker D: 00:22:02

Right.

Speaker A: 00:22:02

That's the social withdrawal and you just again, the introversion. And a lot of times depression goes hand in hand with that too.

Speaker D: 00:22:09

Right.

Speaker A: 00:22:10

So as we get into those more extreme cases of calcification rising in the tissues, there can be a lot of other symptoms that come along with it. Osteoporosis, osteopenia, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia.

I've even seen really high calcification in lupus cases because of the oxidative stress that it causes in inflammation. Right. So there's a lot of other things that can come down the road if that, if that pattern isn't corrected.

Speaker B: 00:22:33

And people might be surprised to Hear that they have high calcium levels, yet they may be dealing with osteoarthritis and. And things that often when they're recommended to take more calcium. Right.

Speaker A: 00:22:46

Yeah. I've worked with a number of cases. Actually. There's one in particular always stands out in my mind because it was just such a pivotal case.

And she's actually still a client. Many years later, she came to me with osteoporosis. She was actually diagnosed with osteoporosis.

She started taking calcium supplementation, and then she was downgraded to osteopenia. And when I saw her test, she had an extreme calcium shell.

And the reason that she was actually seeking out alternative treatment, potentially, was the fact that she couldn't exercise anymore. She loved trampolining.

Speaker D: 00:23:17

Right?

Speaker A: 00:23:17

That was her thing, and she wanted to do it, but she was so sore. Her body. She said her body felt literally like a statue. Her hands, she couldn't make a fist anymore.

She was getting calcification on her joints and her fingers. And so she was really trying to figure out, you know, what was happening. She's like, I'm doing all the right things. I'm eating right.

I'm doing all these things, and I. I'm feeling worse and worse every day.

I think when she came to me, she was having a bowel movement maybe, you know, two or three times a week, and that's not okay. The bowels need to be moving every day.

But again, this is part of that high calcium, low magnesium, and now everything in the body starts to turn a little bit rigid like stone.

Speaker D: 00:23:53

Right?

Speaker A: 00:23:53

And so we've got to get the.

Speaker B: 00:23:55

The.

Speaker A: 00:23:55

The movement, the fluidity back in the body. And so, yeah, so. So she decided she wanted to take a different route, and so, again, made some changes, brought in the minerals, did her test.

And in about nine months, it took us about nine months, we got her calcium down to a normal level. Still had good bone scan, so that was perfect.

And at that point, we actually brought in a little bit of calcium alongside her minerals to kind of help that. So we didn't want to go too low. But in that period of time, her bowels started moving. She was trampolining again. Her hands were getting better.

Like, everything changed.

And, you know, this one really stands out in my mind because after she kind of went down that alternative path, she actually went through to get a health practitioner certification after, because she was just so intrigued by what she had gone through and the changes that it made in her life.

So it really, really does make a huge impact for yeah, for those that have, you know, some of those inflammatory issues and even osteoporosis and osteopenia.

Speaker B: 00:24:53

And I think this is something that a lot of people don't understand, that when you take like a single supplement like calcium or even a multivitamin, you really need to understand your own picture of where your body's at before you start taking supplements, because it can push you in the wrong direction.

Because it's not just enough to take calcium, but you need all the cofactors like K2 and magnesium and other minerals and vitamins so your body can put that calcium in the right place in your body. Like in your bones instead of your joints, right?

Speaker A: 00:25:25

Yep.

Speaker B: 00:25:26

So when I got into HCME testing a few years ago, like, literally, it blew my mind, the complexity that was involved.

Because it used to be, oh, yeah, let me just take some magnesium supplements or let me just take my element, you know, that supposed to have all the electrolytes in it. And when people take these sort of cookie cutter supplements, they can actually do more, sometimes do more harm than good. And.

And that always really concerns me because there's so much customization and everybody is very unique and their biology, their mineral patterns are so unique, although they fall into these patterns that we can recognize. As you mentioned, and you went over three, I think we are still missing one, right? Yeah, yeah, we have one more to cover.

Speaker A: 00:26:11

More to cover.

Speaker B: 00:26:12

But I just want everybody to know that a test like this is such a small price to pay to understand where your body is sitting at and what your pattern look like so you can actually supplement the right way. But I'm going to let you finish all the patterns. I keep interrupting you.

Speaker A: 00:26:30

Oh, my goodness, no. So. So there is one more pattern. And then I want to touch on.

I want to touch on diet and supplementation because I do think that that's really important. So the last pattern, so we went through the fast, the slow, right? The kind of polar opposites, the four lows. Now we have the four highs.

And the four highs is an interesting pattern. And this is the one up to, like I said, just shy maybe nine months to 12 months ago, I didn't really see all that much.

And the last little while, we see it all the time. And so this particular pattern, you know, when I look at it and we look at symptoms, so my team does a lot of evaluations.

We look at hundreds and hundreds of tests a month. And when we see these types of patterns, they're going along with stress in an individual, right? So usually a heavy Load of stressors on board.

And what we call this pattern is, I've kind of termed it an inflated stress pattern.

I don't know if anyone else has called it that before, but it's really, you know, kind of the body really inflating to try and step up and bring everything it has to the table. To that, those stressors, probably more than one, right? To be able to see what type of change can happen.

A lot of times they do are kind of, kind of like fast oxidizers a little bit, even though they have high calcification and, you know, magnesium loss. But because of the fact that their adrenals and their thyroid are kind of kicking up, right. They're on overdrive.

So their bodies are operating very similar to a fast oxidizer. But all the minerals, those big four minerals, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, are inflated.

And what we want to do in these types of patterns is we just want to be able to see if we can decrease the stressors and kind of give the body a soft landing as it comes down back down into more of a balance position right from that inflated pattern. So. So that's really the fourth one that we're seeing more and more. And.

And, you know, coming back to talking about supplementation and patterns, I think the one misconception people have is that they're going to test their hair, be in a pattern, and they're never going to be able to change it. And that's completely untrue. I see people bounce from fast to slow and back to fast, and it depends on, you know, I see a lot of athletes do that.

You know, they're in competition season, they move into a slow, but they're still feeling great. And then when they're off season, they move back into fast oxidation. Right?

There's lots of movement that can go on and movement that stemmed from what someone's doing, so their lifestyle. Right. How are we sleeping? What type of exercise are we doing? You know, where's our head at? What's our mindset like? Yeah, right.

What are we putting in our mouth? Are we hydrating? You know, and then we have to think about supplements. And so the way that I look at HTM a, like, I'm 50, I'm almost 52.

And the way that I look at htm a personally is that it's my guide to forever as I test, you know, every six months or even a year, I have athletes a test once a year where, you know, you don't have to go to the health food store. And guess what? You need to put into your body to be able to provide what the body needs.

Speaker D: 00:29:13

Right.

Speaker A: 00:29:13

You've got it right in front of you.

It's a blueprint for what you should be eating, right, what you should be taking for supplementation, some of maybe the extra support that you need, right. If you've got a low phosphorus, maybe we need some more, you know, collagen or amino acids.

Speaker D: 00:29:25

Right.

Speaker A: 00:29:26

So there's lots of different data that you can get from that. So I would say, why guess?

You know, figure out what your pattern looks like now, support it, and then kind of track the changes over time so that you can really kind of contribute to that anti aging process. You know, one of the stories I love sharing because, you know, people do ask quite, quite a lot, you know, what happens and it's usually women.

What happens with my hair?

You know, start getting gray hair when I'm kind of my late 30s, early 40s sometimes I think I was around 41, maybe might have been a bit earlier than that. And I started minimal balancing a decade ago. I'm now almost 52 and I don't have any gray hair and I haven't dyed my hair in like seven years. So.

So it just goes to show you that you can kind of bring things kind of back, reel everything in, and your body, if it's being given the right things, can actually stay younger longer because it has the, like you term the building blocks to be able to actually do it.

Speaker B: 00:30:18

What are the most common mineral imbalances that you see in women?

Speaker A: 00:30:24

You know, what most common pattern in women is slow oxidation. So, and again, I'm generalizing, so I don't want anyone to run out and start, you know, drinking sea salt water all day long or anything.

But a lot of times we see low sodium and sodium is directly related to the adrenals.

Speaker B: 00:30:40

Right.

Speaker A: 00:30:40

How are the adrenals functioning? So if the sodium is low, then the adrenals most likely are a bit underactive and not quite keeping up. The other one is potassium. Right.

So low potassium affects thyroid. And then you mentioned calcium shell early.

It's not always a calcium shell, but a lot of times we see high tissue calcification and that tends to be, I think a lot of it sometimes tends to be from, you know, as women. We are, we're trying to kind of keep things going and potentially be in a little bit of control and things like that.

And I think that calcification can build because of that fact. So there's, again, it's not all about, you know, what you're eating.

It's, it's all about what you're thinking and how you're acting and reacting and your lifestyle factors and as well. But those are probably the most common.

And I mean, in general, I would say most people, you know, need a little bit of magnesium in some form or another, just because it does help our body to be able to be resilient to stress.

Speaker B: 00:31:32

Hey there, Ori here with a quick message. This is a brand new podcast and I would love your help with growing our community.

If you're finding this discussion valuable, I would be honored if you take a moment to leave a review and share this episode with a girlfriend or any.

Speaker C: 00:31:46

Woman in your life who might benefit from this information.

Speaker B: 00:31:49

Share your support truly makes a difference. So thank you for helping me spread the word.

Speaker C: 00:31:53

And now let's get back to our conversation.

Speaker B: 00:31:56

And I think this might be the perfect time to bring the conversation back to the copper toxicity.

So can you speak to what happens with a lot of these slow oxidizers, low metabolic types, and how our interplay between our hormones and potentially even for younger women taking birth control pills, how is that actually pushing our minerals in a wrong direction or out of balance?

Speaker A: 00:32:20

Yeah, this is a, this is a big topic and you know, loosely, I, I try and use all the terms because I think that people still kind of talk about them and they're really kind of interchangeable. When you said bio unavailable. Copper. Copper toxicity. Right. Some people don't like copper toxicity, but they really mean the same thing.

You know, all it means is that we've got copper, a very important mineral for energy and so many other contributing factors that it's responsible for in the body, in the body, in the tissues, causing problems in excess that isn't in technically a usable bioavailable form to be able to contribute to the processes that it needs to contribute to. So now we're suffering because of it. And birth control, like estrogen and copper, are succinctly related.

The more estrogen we're exposed, exposed to, the more the body has to detox, the more copper ends up in the body and it's just a hamster wheel. And so in order to be able to transport copper, we need to have glycoprotein called ceruloplasmin.

Speaker D: 00:33:19

Right.

Speaker A: 00:33:20

It transports 95% of copper.

And if our adrenals are not working as well as they should be because of stress or other things, and I'll give one more factor, then the adrenals really aren't going to be helping the Liver produce that glycoprotein. And now we've got copper pile up.

Speaker D: 00:33:37

Right.

Speaker A: 00:33:37

And the body has to do something with that because copper and as calcium earlier.

Speaker D: 00:33:42

Right.

Speaker A: 00:33:43

That tissue calcification, they both cause a lot of oxidative stress and inflammation in the body and so kind of burying it away. I always say it's like opening up a closet. You've got, you know, people coming over and your house is in a little bit of disarray.

You open a closet, throw everything, and you shut the door. The body's going to do the same thing in the cells, and they just want to shut the door to be able to clean up that day.

But as those doors keep getting shut, eventually things start pouring out, Right.

And the more that we're exposed, whether it's copper iud, I see terrible, terrible symptoms in a lot of cases with women who, you know, maybe even have them for a month or two and they just can't tolerate it. They have to get it removed.

Birth control tends to build up over a bit of a longer period of time, but ultimately the effect on the adrenals is the same because copper really, as it's in the body, is a bit of an excitotoxin. It's very stimulatory. So it's stimulating the adrenals over stimulating them, really causing them to be more. More kind of burned out.

And then, of course, that's another hamster wheel where we need that protein to transport copper, but the adrenals just aren't there to support the liver's production of it. So it really is a cascade of events for, you know, what the body needs for energy and even our hormone balance.

Because copper equals estrogen dominance.

Speaker D: 00:34:57

Right.

Speaker A: 00:34:57

That's one of the reasons why I had this estrogen I couldn't budget, but it was because my adrenals were fatigued.

Speaker D: 00:35:03

Right.

Speaker A: 00:35:03

Was because my zinc stores weren't optimal.

Speaker D: 00:35:06

Right.

Speaker A: 00:35:06

So some of these other things are really important and necessary to keep copper imbalance and to be able to make it bioavailable. For example, vitamin A, critical to be able to ensure that copper is bioavailable, even if. Even if copper elevations in the tissues are high.

By bringing in at least vitamin A and some of the other nutrients that are identified, you can start to transport some of it with a little bioavailability and support the adrenals so that at least you're getting a benefit from some of it as the body clears out some of the excess.

Speaker D: 00:35:36

Right.

Speaker A: 00:35:37

So again, one of the reasons why it's important to really look at the whole picture.

So you're bringing in all of, you know, the vitamins, minerals and even potentially amino acids that the body might need to be able to do, you know, that transition.

Speaker B: 00:35:50

And I think a big part of the conversation that sometimes gets missed that a lot of women are being told also that they are iron deficient.

And I think iron needs to be part of this conversation of copper iron metabolism, because just like copper can pile up, iron can also bioaccumulate in the body but be unavailable. So a lot of women are being told to supplement with iron.

And again, we are talking about this like one lever approach, like, oh, you have low ferritin or just measuring maybe one biomarker exactly. In your blood.

And now you should be taking iron, which is already accumulated in your tissues probably, but your body is not utilizing it because some of the cofactors, some of the elements and other minerals are out of balance in your bodies. And that's affecting our hormone, this interplay between minerals and hormones.

I think a lot of women don't understand that so much hormone balance is also mineral balance in the body.

Speaker A: 00:36:45

Absolutely. And you know, I'll dive into the iron in a second. We'll talk about hafaestim.

But you know, even from menopause, so, so three and a half years ago, I started having some symptoms, perimenopause and what have you, a little bit of hot flashes, I wasn't sleeping well, things like that. And it's funny too, when you get into the mindset, right? You're like, what's happening to me? And they're like, oh my gosh, I know what's happening.

48, here's what's happening. And, and I adjusted my minerals. I mean, I've been balancing for years, but I adjusted my minerals.

I brought in some extra boron and a few things that I knew I would need in this transition. And probably within about three weeks, all my symptoms were gone.

And I'll tell you, to date, three and a half years later, I really don't have any menopausal symptoms at all. I sleep great, I've got good energy.

And again comes back not only to just can't out supplement a poor lifestyle, poor diet, poor hydration, it comes back to all that. Got to look at the whole picture now.

Iron, such a, such a controversial topic because you know, how many, I always wonder, you know, how many people listening to this or even watching this, women who have been said, oh, you know, you've got iron deficiency anemia, you know, take this iron supplement and then we'll retest your, you know, your levels in six weeks or eight weeks or you know, even 12 weeks and it doesn't budge. And they take it for months and months and nothing budges. It's like, well, that's because it's not traveling via transferrin anymore.

So one of the exit points, so when, when you're ingesting iron, whether it's from food or whether it's from supplementation, whether it's heme, non heme doesn't matter, it's going to enter the intestinal cell and in order to exit it needs a multi copper oxidase called hephaestin. And if that's missing, it's not going to be bound to transferrin and be able to be transported.

So there's multiple spots, not only hephaistin but also ceruloplasmin like I talked about earlier, that's another mco.

If those are not there to transport copper, then iron as well is going to start to be stored and then it's going to end up shedding and being lost out of the body or building up in, in liver enzyme cells. So there's different kind of mechanisms where iron deficiency anemia could be literally driven by copper bio availability.

So fix the copper problem and then we fix the iron.

Speaker D: 00:39:04

Right.

Speaker A: 00:39:04

I remember when I was deemed copper toxic or having high bioin available copper in the tissues, I was, I used to get iron infusions. I was probably iron anemic, I would say for probably two or almost three decades.

Speaker D: 00:39:18

Right.

Speaker A: 00:39:19

All the end of teenage years, all the way till I was almost 40.

And, and during that period of time I had taken profarin, I had done again, I had done iron injections, infusions, which would raise your iron to, you know, over 100 for maybe a month or two months or maybe even three months if you were lucky. And then it would drop again.

Speaker D: 00:39:38

Right.

Speaker A: 00:39:39

I think the lowest mine got was like nine. So it's like we're, we're band aiding the problem, but the body isn't utilizing it properly.

So all we're doing is a band aid and then the band aid keeps falling off.

Speaker D: 00:39:50

Right.

Speaker A: 00:39:51

Once I actually got to the bottom of my mineral balance and got through, through that, now my iron is fine. All right. My ferritin's always in a good level. I don't even have to worry about it anymore.

So it's, you know, again, it's getting to the root of the problem. What is the root of that problem?

Speaker D: 00:40:05

Right.

Speaker B: 00:40:06

Yeah. Even in the holistic integrated functional space, I see a lot of doctors recommending iron supplementation for hypothyroidism.

When you have hyperthyroid symptoms, hair loss, oh, you need iron. Can you speak to just the thyroid function and minerals and the relationship there?

Speaker A: 00:40:24

Yeah. And so, you know, the thyroid's a tough one. And again, remember I mentioned earlier, a lot of women are slow oxidizers, right.

eemed significant back in the: 1970

And even if, even if there isn't a primary thyroid problem from hormone production standpoint, there could be a blocking of those hormones being uptake into the cell because of the calcification in the tissues because the cells too are going to be less permeable. So another reason why potassium is so important now.

And then the other thing that, that's interesting too, that I always tend to think about is heavy metals. Think about how many heavy metals we're exposed to, even in the environment we're sitting in right now.

Speaker D: 00:41:27

Right.

Speaker A: 00:41:28

How many toxins we're exposed to. When we think about heavy metals and we think about aluminum, mercury. Right.

Some of the more common ones, if we have a body that is in slow oxidation with low sodium and low potassium, you're not going to necessarily see heavy metals on the test. Doesn't mean they're not there. And mercury has a slowing effect on the thyroid too.

Speaker B: 00:41:47

Right.

Speaker A: 00:41:47

So if we've got mercury that's buried in tissues in the body, that could also be affecting the thyroid. And the slower the thyroid gets, the more the thyroid affects mercury.

So it's an interesting, again, there's more to think about than just one thing affecting a specific event. And I will say too, a lot of the symptoms, the hair loss, the cold hands and feet, right.

The constipation, a lot of the things that come with quote, unquote, a sluggish thyroid or if diagnosis, hypothyroidism can also come from bio unavailable copper and slow oxidation, which usually go hand in hand.

Speaker D: 00:42:23

Right.

Speaker A: 00:42:24

So there may be again, a way to be able to use HTMA a bit more proactively so that we're supplementing and, and kind of treating ourselves with what we're taking in internally with the right things to make change.

Speaker B: 00:42:38

Now, one more big piece that obviously we see with women all the Time, especially in middle age, is the stress, how stress is affecting mineral levels in the body. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Because I find personally potassium being the hardest one to get up to the right level, partly because we can't supplement enough that people need. Right. And people also need to have that in their diet and in our supplementation. Really need to get go along with a good nutritional strategy.

Speaker A: 00:43:07

Absolutely, yeah. So potassium is a tough one.

And so when we think about the first mechanism of action that the body goes through when a stressor hits us is the kidneys are going to be called upon to, to recycle sodium.

Speaker D: 00:43:22

Right.

Speaker A: 00:43:23

They want sodium to increase in the body to support the adrenals, and that's going to be at the expense of potassium. And that can become chronic. Right. So, and I will tell you that there are other factors involved. We just talked about one, copper.

If we have higher bioavailable copper in the tissues, that too will affect potassium levels negatively. So this is one of the reasons why we end up sometimes having women with really low potassium and it's copper driven.

Now, let's say we don't have copper on board. The stress factor is still there. And you're right, we need almost 5 grams of potassium a day. Right. I think now it got reduced down.

There were some articles that came out maybe a year ago, it got reduced down to like 3.2 or 2.9. That's way too low. 4.7 grams is, is about perfect.

And when you think about even, you know, a can of coconut water, so if you have a really good can of coconut water, you know, without all the added sugar, a lot of times you'll maybe get about 1.1 grams in that 500 mil can of potassium.

So think about how much even coconut water you'd have to consume if that's what you were doing to get in your potassium, to get in all that potassium.

Speaker D: 00:44:30

Right.

Speaker A: 00:44:31

So, and I will say too that with potassium, one of the really critical factors of making it, quote, unquote, stick is not only again, if we've got a copper estrogen, right. Problem that needs to be fixed is iodine. Iodine is critical for every cell in the body, not just the thyroid.

Speaker D: 00:44:57

Right.

Speaker A: 00:44:58

And it also helps the body retain potassium. Again, based on the pattern, you need to intelligently bring that in.

Now, whether that's with, again, seaweed, different seaweeds, kelp, make sure it's organic.

Speaker D: 00:45:10

Right.

Speaker A: 00:45:11

We don't want to be consuming all kinds of contaminants.

Speaker D: 00:45:13

Right.

Speaker A: 00:45:14

Or in the form of Iodine, critical for the body's retention of potassium. And again, one of the reasons why it's so effective to support the thyroid in different situations as well.

Speaker B: 00:45:24

Just curious, what's your take on iodine for those people that have Hashimoto's?

Speaker A: 00:45:29

So Hashimoto's is an autoimmune disease. And for those who may or may not be familiar, it's elevated antibodies. Right. Where the thyroid's slowing down.

With antibodies, thyroid peroxidase, thyroglobulin antibodies, one or both may be elevated. I have come over the clinical years, and I learned from a mentor a long time ago, Dr.

Von Maryvelt, is that if you have elevations in antibodies, all roads lead back to the liver. So antibodies, if we support the liver.

Right, whether that's with, you know, many ways to support the liver naturally, you know, lemon water, dandelion root tea, you know, all kinds of different ways, if we support the liver and support the body with what it needs, then small doses of iodine or even just organic kelp or having seafood or seaweed. Seafood, seaweed. And support like that can be super helpful. I use it all the time.

Again, finding a practitioner that understands Hashimoto's, that understands mineral balancing is critical for, you know, any strategies moving forward.

Speaker B: 00:46:32

That's another thing that you hear literally the opposite advice in, even in the functional medicine space, specifically with Hashimoto's. And we know that over 90% of hypothyroidism is Hashimoto's too. So they go hand in hand.

Speaker A: 00:46:47

Yeah, well, too much iodine can increase TPO antibodies. So that's one factor.

Speaker D: 00:46:51

Right.

Speaker A: 00:46:51

So the right dose is important. The second one, too is there's. There is a misconsumption.

And I wouldn't say not necessarily Hashimoto's, although it could be, but hypothyroidism in general is that iodine implementation really at any level, unless it's a microdose. Right. Small microgram dose, at any level of a therapeutic dose of iodine, it's going to increase TSH initially.

And so a lot of even functional medicine doctors and things like that will take that as now we have an onset of an increased level of hypothyroidism because of the TSH increase, but it's just because of the iodine being brought into the system.

Speaker B: 00:47:27

And also there's so much nuances. We spoke about this earlier that when we're using, like, one element, that there's so many other cofactors that need to go with iodine. Right.

So you Actually assimilate it properly like the sodium and the magnesium and the selenium. And you can probably speak to that.

Of all the other things that we need to bring in B vitamins and other things that our body need to take the iodine and utilize it properly. Absolutely.

Speaker A: 00:47:52

So there's really, I mean, in my mind there's two, but there's really five. So Dr. Brownstein and Lynn Farrow identified five.

Speaker D: 00:47:58

Right.

Speaker A: 00:47:58

Magnesium, vitamin C. Actually it might be more than five. Magnesium, vitamin C, sea salt critical. Right. And then your B2, your B3. I feel like I'm missing one.

Speaker B: 00:48:08

Oh, selenium.

Speaker A: 00:48:09

So there's six. I'm like, I feel like there's more than five. But they put sea salt separately, so there's five CO factors and then sea salt.

In my opinion, selenium sufficient cells critical when we're going to bring iodine into the picture in, in a lot of cases, to be quite honest, if you're already mineral balancing, you're probably going to have the B2, B3 on board, most likely the vitamin C and also the magnesium. So they're kind of already there in a lot of cases. But sodium sea salt is, in my opinion, the most important outside of selenium.

And that's because the CO transporter that transports potassium iodide into the thyrocyte is sandwiched between sodium. Right. You need sodium to get it into the thyroid follicular cell where it's going to do the work.

So if it, if you don't have enough sodium in the body, we don't have, it's not going to go where it needs to to go.

So those selenium and sea salt are my opinion, critical, I will say too, you know, for those that might be even familiar with Lynn Farrow's worker and Dr. Brownstein, the one thing that I have learned, and again from Dr.

Von Mary Velt, who is very well versed in iodine, is that we don't necessarily always need either to do like sea salt loading.

Speaker D: 00:49:15

Right.

Speaker A: 00:49:15

There's, there's salt loading that, that you, you can do it. I just find sometimes a lot of people, if you know, it causes edema and swelling and things like that.

So but if you're taking in, again, based on your htma, the proper amount of sea salt every day and providing the body with that, the loading I don't think is really all that necessary.

Speaker B: 00:49:34

And that's more for like really higher dose iodine therapies where it's crucial. I think. One more thing I want to Touch on is the idea of salt.

Because I think a lot of people are so worried about even putting salt in their food and Because. Yeah, exactly. For those of you not watching this and listening. Celtic salt. Yeah. Lisa was just showing her Celtic salt that was in her drawer.

And, and I also, I'm very particular about getting the right salt, even just the salt I'm putting on all my food. But also we mentioned stress being such a big problem for women.

And when you say sodium, you know, you may want to speak to what that should look like because it's not just table salt. Right. That we want to be taking in. And why is that so important to support our, our stress levels?

Speaker A: 00:50:21

Yeah. So I mean, really whether it's, you know, iodized salt is really just sodium chloride, but then it's got iodine in it.

Now the question becomes it's over processed in most cases. And if it's sitting on a table in an open shaker. Right. You've got holes in the top of the shaker, so it's being oxidized by the air.

By the time you actually consume that, there's really going to be little to no iodine benefit left.

Speaker D: 00:50:45

Right.

Speaker A: 00:50:45

Because it's just been oxidized out. So sea salt, I mean, for us, I really think sea salt, I mean, the majority of sea salt is sodium chloride. Right.

So the base is the same, but you've got all the other minerals in it to support the body as well. So hence why, you know, even in my water.

Speaker D: 00:51:00

Right.

Speaker A: 00:51:01

Sea salt and potassium in my water every day.

Speaker D: 00:51:03

Right.

Speaker A: 00:51:03

Again, based on my htma, I need that. Right. There are instances where too much sea salt can actually cause sodium to go too high on the test. Not common to what we see, but it can happen.

So again, knowing what those look like is important. But yeah, the, the body needs sodium and I feel like salt in general, whether it's salt or sea salt doesn't matter. Gets a bad name.

Speaker D: 00:51:26

Right.

Speaker A: 00:51:27

The all hypertension and all these things. But you have to think too.

And this, I think is an interesting fact for a lot of people is that yes, hypertension can come in the form of fast oxidation when the calcium is low and the magnesium's low and the stimulus sodium on the, on the test is too high.

Speaker D: 00:51:42

Right.

Speaker A: 00:51:43

That can cause hyper. Hypertension.

But in the same token, if you don't have enough sodium and your potassium's low and your calcification is high, that pattern can also contribute to hypertension because of the calcification.

Speaker D: 00:51:58

Right.

Speaker A: 00:51:58

So bringing in sea salt in that particular situation is critical. And remember I said sodium has a direct relationship with the adrenals.

So the more sea salt that we take in based on the levels that we actually need.

Speaker D: 00:52:11

Right.

Speaker A: 00:52:12

Again from testing, the more energy you should have as well. You have a lot of people that will start even just on adrenal cocktails based on their test and they feel different.

The difference was in like four or five days, right.

Because a lot of people, again, I would say around my age, like when you hit their 50s, it's like, okay, you need to make sure you're not consuming too much salt and things like that, right. And I'm just like, oh my gosh. But you know, my test, I'm only at 616 milligram percent. The ideal is 24. I need, I need sea salt.

Speaker D: 00:52:38

Right.

Speaker A: 00:52:39

So, so again, it's about knowing and having that blueprint and the understanding of how this can benefit us and why it's so critical. You have to remember that, you know, sodium potassium pumps are what runs the energy in our cells.

There's an ion exchange and if we don't have sodium and potassium in the body, that ion exchange for energy doesn't happen.

Speaker D: 00:52:56

Right.

Speaker A: 00:52:57

And, and that's why a lot of times too, people drink water and they're like, I drink all this water, but I'm still feel like I'm thirsty. It's because they're dehydrated at a cell level because they're not putting any sea salt or sodium chloride in their water.

Speaker D: 00:53:11

Right.

Speaker A: 00:53:12

And it's critical to activate those pumps and, and be, and have the efficiency of cellular hydration. So really, really critical element. Again, we want to look at the big picture, right. Rather than one specific element. But it does play a pretty big.

Speaker B: 00:53:26

Role addressing the cellular health.

The terrain itself is the most foundational thing that as a health practitioner, for me, doing an HDMA test is such a no brainer because it's one of the least expensive functional tests you can order. You get such a big bang for your buck. I mean, your money goes really far. When you get a hair tissue mineral analysis test.

It's non invasive because it just involves cutting a little bit of hair. It's non invasive. You get so, so much data out of it. And it allows us to have a strategy that's personalized for you directly. Right.

And now I want you to talk about what your company does, Vicon, because as a health practitioner, Elisa works with other health practitioners where we can actually custom formulate a very specific mineral balance and formula that is based on your testing. So tell us a little bit how that works, Lisa, for. Especially if you have some other health practitioners listening.

Speaker A: 00:54:21

Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, the one thing I noticed years ago when I was in a clinic and I started doing HTMA testing for my clients is the protocols were pretty intense, Right. We're trying to piece me up together. Oh, you need magnesium, and we need. We talked about things earlier, right?

We need potassium, and we need, you know, zinc, and we need mineral support, and we need, you know, B vitamins and just all these things. And I remember, you know, after a number of clients, you know, I used to not even have bags at my office.

It was boxes, because they'd have so many different supplements because we wanted to do an IDD protocol. So a lot of times there was a lot of bottles involved in high cost and things like that.

And what I was noticing pretty commonly when I started was that the protocols weren't being followed the way that they should. And so my clients weren't getting the results that I knew that they could get.

And that as a practitioner, I mean, when we're a health practitioner, all we want to do is help people. That's why we get out of bed every morning.

So when I realized I wasn't really getting the results for these people that I knew I could because of my own progress, and, I mean, again, I was doing some pretty big protocols. Some of them are two pages long that I got from people that I was working with. Right. It's just too stressful for them.

And I thought, you know, there has to be a better solution. That's what I kept thinking to myself. And so.

So, yeah, so I spent a year testing, looking at some of the more common patterns and really kind of figuring out what were some of the vitamins and minerals that they specifically needed and what were some of the doses I was seeing that was working well. And. And I started putting bases together for customized supplements based on those patterns that we talked about.

And the cool part about it is we have the ability to customize every base.

So, you know, if you have someone who is a slow oxidizer and needs the sea salt and the potassium and your magnesium and all the things, you can actually add in other things. So if you want to add in extra liver support or you want to bring in something like N acetylcysteine or, you know, some different B vitamins or just.

I mean, we have a whole slew of additions that you can choose from, but it's fully customized. So at the end of the Day, rather than your client having, say, 15 or 20 different things to take every day, they have one.

And so what I noticed right away was that client adherence for me, when I started testing these years ago, went from about 50% to almost 100. And then I was finally seeing results.

And, you know, one of the biggest hurdles that I had personally, because I'd been taught this throughout my 20s training in functional medicine, was that there's always certain times of day to take things for them to work the best.

But when it came down to the grand scheme of things, I was getting better results, even ignoring that time of day, because they were actually taking the supplement.

Speaker D: 00:56:56

Right.

Speaker A: 00:56:57

And that brought better results than all of the timing involved that people were talking about. So. So it really does kind of streamline things and allows for you to put more into a powder as well.

So if they're taking other things, there's a way to add that, too, just to be able to reduce the stress of. Of natural protocols, because some of them can get pretty, pretty intense.

Speaker B: 00:57:15

And this is why I find it really annoying when people are advocating for multivitamins and even for just electrolytes, because it can be very dysregulating for the person because it's completely uncustomized, generic. And what Lisa's company offers is completely the opposite of that.

It's going to be completely specifically tailored to your body, wherever you are, based on that archeological record of your hair of the last three, three to four months, looking at your health specifically where you are at. And we can custom formulate something very specific to you.

And instead of taking 20 different supplements that you have to buy individually, it's all put into one formula that can be either a powder or encapsulated formula.

Speaker A: 00:58:02

And.

Speaker B: 00:58:03

And you just take one thing now. You take multiple. Usually it's not one or two tablets, but it's quite a few capsules.

Or you take a scoop of maybe a scoop twice a day if it's a powder, and you just put in a shake. And it really simplifies the process.

Lisa knows that I do this for my mom, and my mom is 81, and she's been on the Vicom formulas for, gosh, like, at least two years now. And she's thriving on it. And honestly, her compliance level would be like, zero if it was.

If it was not for me actually giving her, like, this is what you take. How many? She would not be doing anything.

Speaker A: 00:58:43

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:58:43

And for people that have fairly low compliance, you can really see a huge result with them just supporting them. The Right way. And.

And then of course, there's a health optimization group that a lot of those women that I see that take already a lot of supplements. And then on top of that, giving them other. Other 15, 20 can just be so overwhelming. Like, no one can keep track of that.

This is such an incredible help for us practitioners to have this resource where we can literally custom compound these amazing vitamin mineral formulas for people to be super specific. And then also. So if you're a health practitioner, you need to go and open an account with Lisa. Can you share, like, what's your website like?

How can people find you if they're a health practitioner first? And then we'll also speak to that if they actually want to find somebody to work with.

Speaker A: 00:59:34

Yeah, absolutely. So Vicon Customs.com is our practitioner website. That's our pro site.

So, yeah, you can apply for an account there and you get full access to all of our base formulas. And we do have an onboarding practitioner success manager. So you can do an onboarding call with them.

They can walk you through and kind of just give you the background on the website too, to make you a little bit more familiar. So that's a great way to kind of get introduced to the site as well.

Speaker B: 00:59:58

Yes. And if you are just somebody who like, okay, I'm trying to get my health back on track, I would love to get a hair tissue mineral analysis done.

How do people find a practitioner that understand how to order the right test, how to evaluate the tests? Do you have a database of practitioners? How does that work?

Speaker A: 01:00:16

We do, actually. So you can go either one of our websites that they hit.

So there's Vicon Customs, which is just our practitioner website, but we do have a referral list on there based on the world.

So you can click where you are in the world and there'll be a list of practitioners and how they work, whether they work in person or virtual or both, and what they specialize in. They'll also find the same list on our Viconsupplements.com website.

So that's a more retail website with some of our whey proteins and other things that we sell. So the same list is there so they can find a practitioner in their area or someone who specializes in something that they're looking for.

Speaker B: 01:00:47

Lisa, thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. Thank you for your time. Is there any parting advice? Anything else you want to share before we wrap it up?

Speaker A: 01:00:55

Yeah. You know what? I would say minerals are the first step to anti aging.

Speaker D: 01:00:59

Right.

Speaker A: 01:01:00

If we can age gracefully and you know live better and have a better quality of life longer then you know then you're on the right track. Use them in your journey.

Speaker E: 01:01:09

Thank you so much for tuning in. This is Maya Our production team pours our hearts into this show because we believe women deserve better.

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