Unlock the secrets of how your diet can influence your genes and transform your health with Annette Presley, a dietitian who broke free from outdated nutrition guidelines. Discover the groundbreaking field of nutrigenomics and learn why your lifestyle choices are more powerful than your genetic code. We even touch on the surprising insights from my time with the Alzheimer's Association, revealing that lifestyle improvements can often trump genetic predispositions when it comes to disease prevention.
CONNECT WITH ANNETTE PRESLEY: https://getpregnantplan.com/
CONNECT WITH NIKA: https://mtr.bio/nika-lawrie
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I would love to hear from you! Please record your question or topic request to be featured in a future episode: https://www.speakpipe.com/NikaLawrie
DISCLAIMER:
*This podcast and its contents are for informational purposes only and are not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or a qualified health provider for any questions concerning a medical condition or health objectives. Additionally, the advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every individual and are not guaranteed for business, personal, or wellness success. Use discretion and seek professional counsel when necessary.
AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER:
*Some of the resources and advertisements shared throughout the podcast episodes may contain affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something, I may earn a commission.
Unlock the secrets of how your diet can influence your genes and transform your health with Annette Presley, a dietitian who broke free from outdated nutrition guidelines. Discover the groundbreaking field of nutrigenomics and learn why your lifestyle choices are more powerful than your genetic code. We even touch on the surprising insights from my time with the Alzheimer's Association, revealing that lifestyle improvements can often trump genetic predispositions when it comes to disease prevention.
CONNECT WITH ANNETTE PRESLEY: https://getpregnantplan.com/
CONNECT WITH NIKA: https://mtr.bio/nika-lawrie
SUBMIT A QUESTION OR REQUEST A TOPIC:
I would love to hear from you! Please record your question or topic request to be featured in a future episode: https://www.speakpipe.com/NikaLawrie
DISCLAIMER:
*This podcast and its contents are for informational purposes only and are not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or a qualified health provider for any questions concerning a medical condition or health objectives. Additionally, the advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every individual and are not guaranteed for business, personal, or wellness success. Use discretion and seek professional counsel when necessary.
AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER:
*Some of the resources and advertisements shared throughout the podcast episodes may contain affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something, I may earn a commission.
Welcome to the Inspired with.
Annette Presley:Nika Laurie podcast. Annette, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you here today.
Nika Lawrie:Thanks so much for having me. I'm real excited about our conversation.
Annette Presley:Me too. I think it's going to be really fascinating because it's something that I'm really passionate about too. But before we get into it, can you share a little bit about yourself and maybe talk about how you came to work in kind of the functional nutrition, neurogenomics, nutrigenomics excuse me kind of realm? What led you to that area?
Nika Lawrie:Well, I've been a dietitian for about 30 years and about 14 years into it I actually found out that I pretty much have a license to kill, which I jokingly say.
Nika Lawrie:But yes, I mean, I know what you're saying, but yeah, In some ways it's not a joke, but um, so, yeah, the advice I was giving out was actually causing chronic disease and obesity, and um, that just made me really angry into this profession to help people, not kill them or make them feel worse, right? So, um, I almost quit nutrition entirely. Yeah, I was so mad, but I really felt God telling me you have to stay and tell the truth. Yeah, so I changed what I taught, I started going down the path of functional nutrition and even when I was in my regular dietetics I had come across nutrigenomics. So I've kind of been looking at that for a long time, but it all just makes so much sense.
Annette Presley:Yeah.
Nika Lawrie:So yeah, so that's kind of how I went down there.
Annette Presley:So maybe explain for those who don't know what neurogenomics is and really why we should care about it. Real quick, I will love that. You said that you had a license to kill, cause I have a very like funny connection to that. I. I too, I'm a, I'm a functional nutrition counselor by trade and and it's it's funny it's like living in two different worlds, between the two approaches to nutrition and food. So, anyways, I digress, so I apologize, but can you explain what is nutrigenomics and, again, why we should care about it?
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, so nutrigenomics is really the study of how food impacts your genes, and so a lot of people have this idea that, well, I just I have the genes for this, so I'm doomed and our genes are not our destiny. So we actually can change the way our genes are expressed, so we can turn on genes.
Annette Presley:And then can I, can I, I can. I'm going to stop you for a second. My computer is beeping at me and I don't know I've never heard it before and I don't know what it's doing.
Nika Lawrie:I've got to love. Technology Is the battery coming out.
Annette Presley:It was my storage thing just started beeping. I thought it was like a car thing outside, but I've never had it do that before. So I apologize, that's okay. Okay, well, it's unplugged, so I'm going to I'll, we'll just edit this out, obviously, and then I will go back and ask you um, and we'll just kind of start over. So I apologize for that, no problem. So can you tell us, for those of us who don't know what neuro I keep saying neuro nutrigenomics is and really why we should care about it, why it's so important?
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, so nutrigenomics is the study of how food impacts our genes, and so, yeah, most people have the idea that I've got the genes for this, so I'm doomed, and yeah, and the reality is our genes do not determine our destiny. There may be like 10% of the issue, yeah, yeah, which is not very much.
Annette Presley:Yeah.
Nika Lawrie:So we can actually turn on genes that express for health and turn off genes that express for disease, and we do that just by eating different foods or changing things that we're exposed to in our environment and that kind of thing. So it's really like your lifestyle has way more impact on you than your genes do.
Annette Presley:I love that. So I was first exposed to this concept. I used to work for the Alzheimer's Association. I worked there for about a decade and I had the privilege of working and learning from some of the top dementia researchers in the world. It was really an amazing opportunity. Test positive for some of the genes that kind of connect you to potentially having dementia or Alzheimer's disease that the vast majority of people actually don't get the disease based off of how their lifestyles are and with the food that they're eating, and so it's not necessarily a death sentence when you test positive for those genes, and so it's an interesting topic that I really started to kind of love and dive into over the last couple of years.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, well, it's really exciting because we actually have more control than we have been led to believe.
Annette Presley:Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Nika Lawrie:That's really important for people to understand is that they actually can do something.
Annette Presley:Yeah, I think. So. That leads me into the next question I have for you. You know, you kind of specialize in looking at fertility struggles or infertility and how the foods we eat and that though, the environmental toxins and things like that really interact with fertility or infertility. Can you talk about kind of the 10,000 mile view of of how those two relate to each?
Nika Lawrie:other yeah. So I had an aha moment one time and I realized, when it comes to fertility, everybody is focused on the mechanics of getting pregnant. So, you know, getting the egg and the sperm connected, and if that was the problem, ivf would work a hundred percent of the time.
Annette Presley:Every time yeah.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah so and it doesn't yeah, In fact it doesn't really work that well at all.
Annette Presley:You have like a 40% chance of getting pregnant with IVF if you do three cycles.
Nika Lawrie:Oh man, and so that's like $30,000.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, yeah, it's the odds are really not great, and if you're over 35, it's even worse. So um and so I. What I realized was that our biology is no longer a match for our environment. We have so many, and so I actually use the analogy of somebody who's throwing darts at you and you know one, two, three darts, you're going to be okay. But if, if somebody throws hundreds of darts at you and they just never stopped throwing darts at you, you know at some point you're going to be a bloody mess on the floor right Death by a thousand paper cuts.
Annette Presley:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Nika Lawrie:And so that's what the environment is doing to us. It's throwing darts, and so, and these darts, of course, are toxins, and what I've really found is that all of the toxins that we're exposed to have either bromide chlorine or fluoride in them, and those all are related to iodine, so they're all in the same family, and so those things bind to iodine receptors in the body and every single cell has an iodine receptor. And, you know, most people think iodine is involved with the thyroid, which it is, but the second highest concentration in the body is the ovaries and so yeah, it has a huge impact on reproduction, and so we really have to get a handle on the environment.
Annette Presley:Right. So what are some of the kind of key toxins that you see? I know you mentioned a couple, but where might they be coming in from?
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, so plastic is one of the big ones and of course we're getting that in plastic water bottles and we go to Starbucks and get hot beverages and styrofoam all of that stuff that's basically killing ourselves slowly, um.
Nika Lawrie:But heating plastic, uh. So we might have containers at home that have plastic in them, or we heat things in our microwave with in plastic, um, so all of those things are contributing to um toxins in the body, um. And then water, um, a lot of people don't really think about their water, but tap water is full of all kinds of junk.
Annette Presley:Yeah.
Nika Lawrie:So you've got pharmaceuticals in there, um, you know, chlorine, fluoride, um pesticides, all kinds of things in there, Um, and so you really do need to think about filtering that water and then putting some minerals back in it too.
Annette Presley:Yeah, yeah, absolutely so. What you know you've mentioned a little bit, but can you deep dive a little bit more on the interaction between the food and the genes and then also the gene expression and potential infertility? Like, can you explain how that is connected for kind of somebody who's not exposed to this kind of conversation on a daily basis?
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, so one of the interesting things that I always do DNA testing for my clients, and a lot of them have unexplained infertility. With the DNA testing, I can usually find at least three reasons or explanations. I can usually find at least three reasons or explanations, and so probably the most common one is it's called the MTHFR mutation and basically it's about methylation in the body, which is one of the things that happens in our body that helps us detox, and so if that's not working, all the toxins coming in, we're not dealing with them properly and they're going to build up in the body.
Nika Lawrie:And so that's, you know, causing all kinds of problems, and so that is something that we can fix with the right vitamins like folic acid not folic acid, but folate. So a lot of people women are taking folic acid because that's what's in their prenatals or multivitamins or what the doctor prescribes, and that is a very toxic form of folate that's not really going to help anybody. So there's that kind of thing. Choline deficiency is another thing that I find, and so and it's also related to the methylation cycle, but a lot of women don't. They're just not able to process choline efficiently, and you have to have that to make a healthy baby.
Annette Presley:So how are some and I know this is a very kind of general question and so I know it's going to be very unique and different for each individual but are there some kind of simple ways that people can maybe help support detoxing their body if they're struggling with these kinds of issues?
Nika Lawrie:Yes, and so one of the most important things is you need an oil change Makes sense. Yeah, you have to stop eating the vegetable oils like soy, sunflower and safflower oils.
Annette Presley:Yeah.
Nika Lawrie:All of those are really bad and you want to eat.
Annette Presley:I literally typed out that exact list almost in that exact order. Yesterday I was writing an article to be released and I think a week or two, about oil swaps and what to eat and what to not. I think I wrote out that list of these are all the ones to avoid, along with canola and vegetable oil. These are all the ones to avoid, along with canola and vegetable oil, and you know. And then I had the list of the ones to add in. So I love that you mentioned that definitely.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, and that's hugely important because those oils are so inflammatory and they just make everything worse in the body, and so you want to eat real fat like butter, coconut oil, olive oil. Want to eat real fat like butter, coconut oil, olive oil, beef, tallow, lard, properly rendered of course, not the kind with the hydrogenated oil in it.
Annette Presley:Yes, so all the oils that we were told not to eat over the last 40 years are the ones that we should really actually be digesting Exactly.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, you want to do the opposite. Yes, the dietary guidelines. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's the number one thing. Um, the next thing that you should do is include organ meats in your diet.
Annette Presley:And.
Nika Lawrie:I know some people are going to be like what I'm not eating, that, um, it does taste good, um, but liver especially. And if you don't like the taste of it or you can't hack it, you can do liver supplements, so like desiccated liver, freeze dried liver. That's like nature's multivitamins. So you're getting all the nutrients in the right form and in the right balance, and so I actually don't recommend prenatal vitamins, I recommend liver supplements Interesting.
Annette Presley:All right, the prenatal vitamins. Are you just worried about kind of minimal vitamin overload? Or you also concerned about potential toxins and how the vitamin was made or processed or things like that?
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, all of the above. So a lot of the vitamins. You know they have the folic acid in them. They have beta carotene instead of actual vitamin A, and we need the vitamin A. So that's another thing I find, genetically, is that people have a hard time converting beta carotene to vitamin A, and vitamin A is something we also need to make a baby.
Annette Presley:Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, we think that we're taking all these multivitamins to be, you know, a healthful thing for our body. But in reality, understanding how the body processes each one of those individual vitamins or minerals you know, you need, like vitamin D and vitamin K, you really need those to get together to be able to really process them and so understanding how the body actually functions, opposed to, you know, just putting everything in our body and assuming it's going to be okay when it goes through the system.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, cause then food nutrients don't exist by themselves. You know, they always come packaged. So I think that's the thing we've kind of forget with vitamins is we try to do them all individually, yeah, and we're not really thinking about them in the sense of the whole.
Annette Presley:Right, Right. I think a good example of that is fiber. I think about, you know, the powdered fibers that they make that people mix into drinks and stuff all the time, and you really need both soluble and non-soluble for your system to really process and use the fiber in an appropriate way. And so it's it's. I'm sure we could go off on a tangent really deep dive into the issues of processed food and breaking up all of these kinds of things, but it's an important thing to kind of bring light to, even just on a very general level.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Annette Presley:Yeah, so talk to me a little bit about our environment and that impact on our general health, but especially our ability to get and stay pregnant.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, so one thing in the environment that you definitely can control is the genetically modified organisms. So you always want to get food organic, or, if it's, especially if it's soy corn, cotton or canola, um, or papaya or zucchini. So those are all the GMO crops. Um, I think beet sugar as well, but you know we don't want to be eating a whole bunch of beet sugar anyway, yeah, um, but you want those organic. You also want animal foods organic, because a lot of times they're fed genetically modified organisms and those will get into the meat or the milk.
Nika Lawrie:So all animal foods should be organic. So that's like the best way to avoid GMOs, and the problem with GMOs is we've never really studied them in humans. Gmos and the problem with GMOs is we've never really studied them in humans. We have in animals and in animals they do cause infertility, along with organ damage and death. So, yeah, they're not good, we shouldn't have them in our food supply. But the FDA decided they were safe and just like regular food, so they just threw it in there and didn't tell anybody.
Annette Presley:Right yeah.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah.
Annette Presley:It's kind of like the generally regarded as safe, the grassless. The FDA just sort of threw everything in there and said seems okay.
Nika Lawrie:So yeah, but it's really not, so you definitely want to avoid those. And then salt is another thing that we're told not to eat salt, but salt restriction actually acts as a contraceptive.
Annette Presley:Oh interesting, I hadn't heard that before.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, there's actually an Indian tribe Um, I think they're the Yanomamo Indians in Brazil but they have a very low salt diet and they'll have about one live birth every four to six years.
Annette Presley:Oh, wow.
Nika Lawrie:And they have a lot of sex and they don't use birth control. So, um, yeah, so we actually need more salt, and salt actually helps us, um, get rid of toxins, um, especially bromide, and bromide is found in bromide. It's the one that's really hard to avoid because it's in our carpet, furniture, cars, computers. I mean fire retardant clothing, yeah, you know, and so you definitely don't want to use any fire retardant clothing on your children, because consider them growing up years and years of using those toxins on their body.
Annette Presley:Yeah, years and years of using those toxins on their body. Yeah, and you think about it. You know it wasn't quite as prevalent for, say, my parents' generation or even my generation. It started to come in quite a bit, you know, when I was probably in my teens-ish, around there you'd see a lot of the fiery tarnic clothes. But it's much more prevalent now and most people don't even realize that it's in the clothing at all.
Nika Lawrie:Right, yeah, and especially pajamas are the big thing.
Annette Presley:Yeah, absolutely so. You know, we talk about these, these, these toxins or environmental exposures, but how are they actually potentially causing the infertility?
Nika Lawrie:Yeah. So basically what they do, like in the case of fluoride chloride and bromide they're binding to the iodine receptors so that you can't get iodine. So they're basically causing an iodine deficiency. And we know from even third world countries if you don't have iodine you have a lot more miscarriages, you can't get pregnant or you have children born with lower IQs or learning difficulties. So I mean correcting that one deficiency alone can not only help you get and stay pregnant, it can actually help your child not have things like allergies, asthma, adhd, autism, all those things.
Annette Presley:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Can you talk about also the relationship with stress and kind of gene expression, but also infertility? I know you always hear the story about the woman who tried to get pregnant forever and she couldn't get pregnant. She went through infertility, she finally gave up, she would adopt, have the baby and then she would get pregnant on her own naturally, and what they always kind of link it to is the stress of becoming a mom was then removed. I think you know that's a. It's a kind of a small example, but you hear about stress all the time in its relationship to infertility and again to gene expression.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, stress is huge and it's much huger than we give it credit for. But what stress does is it depletes magnesium, and so magnesium is involved in just about everything that goes on in the body, including fertility. So if you're stressing out your magnesium and lowering the levels and you're not repleting it, that's going to cause a whole lot of problems when it comes time to getting pregnant. And so, yeah, basically, stress depletes nutrients too, and really I think the underlying cause of just about everything is fat-soluble vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and so those are what all the toxins are affecting, and the stress is also affecting that as well.
Annette Presley:I think also the stress. It interrupts the way our liver is detoxing the body. It interrupts how our skin is detoxing, how our breath and breathing out toxins, how really the system works as a whole, to understanding that there's all these different moving parts but they're all linked together in one big system that's communicating with each other yeah, and we need magnesium to do all those things.
Nika Lawrie:So we've got all that stress depleting the magnesium. Then nothing in the body is going to function very well.
Annette Presley:Absolutely so. You mentioned quite a few earlier, but now that we know about the environmental toxins, we know about the potential food toxins, are there other suggestions that you might be able to give to help us um one healer bodies, just in general, but to really prepare our bodies if we're interested in getting pregnant or maybe struggling with it?
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, so some other things to be aware of would be, um, electromagnetic frequencies, so like cell phone and your wifi and all of that. So you definitely don't want to carry your cell phone on your body, Um, you don't want to have it near the head of your bed when you're sleeping, um, those kinds of things. You can turn your wifi off at night, um, or put computers in different you know different room than your bedroom, that kind of thing, Um. So so that's one one area. Definitely increasing the salt. Again, I can't stress that enough. We need more salt. And then there's and the sleep is really important, and a lot of people don't really think about that, but we need seven to nine hours of sleep every night because that's when your body is like repairing itself.
Annette Presley:I love I apologize for interrupting I love that you said seven to nine, because everyone always says it's that seven to eight kind of window, and I know for me, for me, to really truly feel rested, I need about eight and a half hours of sleep. That's my, that's my good window, right there. When I, when I find that I'm below that eight hour mark, um, I feel, uh, you know, I wake up tired and and so I think it's important to understand that it's okay to sleep a little bit more than that seven, seven and a half eight hour window.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, and that's you know. We're all different, and so we don't all need exactly the same thing.
Annette Presley:And so yeah.
Nika Lawrie:Which means we don't all need to sleep exactly the same, because there are some people who can get by on six hours. Now I can't. Yeah, yeah, I need really at least eight to really feel good. Yeah, yeah, but the sleep is just huge and you want to sleep in a dark room, like a really dark room, if you can. And then grounding is another thing, and it's really simple. You just go outside barefoot and even just five minutes a day on concrete, sand grass. Sand grass and water are the best things, but concrete works too.
Annette Presley:Yeah, one of my favorite things actually was I bought a grounding pad, so one that you actually plug into the ground spot of your outlet, and it's just a small little pad, it's probably one foot by two feet. But I've noticed that, you know, if I sit at my computer for a long period of time throughout the day, my back will start to hurt from posture issues and that kind of stuff. And if I go lay on the grounding mat, opposed to just stretching or laying on the floor normal or anything like that I can feel the pain, I can feel the inflammation in my back um lessen or or um become minimized, um, just from laying on the grounding mat. And when I first heard about it I was like this is woo, woo, there's no way this is real. But I gave it a try. It was, you know, it was 20 bucks to order one and totally game changing for me. It really had a huge effect on um, just pain spots throughout the body.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah Well, and that actually brings up a good point. I tell people, you know, don't be afraid of woo-woo, yeah yeah, I mean, you can't know until you try it. And sure, there are some woo-woo stuff out there that truly is just woo-woo and ridiculous, but a lot of it is actually right on target. And it just seems weird because you've never heard of it before and your doctor never talks about it. And it just seems weird because you've never heard of it before and your doctor never talks about it, and we've just never been taught these things.
Annette Presley:Yeah, the thing that got me convinced to try it for myself was that there was actually a group of researchers that were putting the grounding mats underneath professional athletes as they slept, and they could actually. They would scan their bodies. So you would have like a kind of a heat sensor, kind of inflammation sensor scan pre-sleep and an after sleep, and then they would do it with and without the mat, so you'd have four different images to compare, and it was a substantial difference for the athletes in the inflammation that they had throughout their body, primarily in their back, and even the athletes said it made a huge difference. And so that's why I decided to go out and try it. And and same thing, I had the same experience. It really was a huge difference.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, yeah, grounding works so, and I mean you can try it for free, so yeah, just take off your shoes, go outside.
Annette Presley:Yeah, I love that. So we we digressed a little bit, but I want to ask, before we wrap up today um, you know, is there anything specific that we haven't covered? Are there specific tools available that you would suggest? Anything that you really think is important to share um with, with really anyone, but specifically someone who's maybe struggling with infertility or looking to get pregnant and wants to have their body in the best shape possible.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, so, like with testing, I think the iodine deficiency test is important. So that's like an iodine loading test is what it's called. Or if you don't take iodine, you can do a urine iodine spot test, but it's. Both of them are urine tests and I recommend really everybody should probably do that one, because most people are deficient, but especially if you are thinking about getting pregnant, you want to correct an iodine deficiency before you do.
Annette Presley:Absolutely.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, so it's definitely worth checking. I love testing DNA because it just gives you answers to things and then kind of look for me. I think what it does is it's you know, having an answer versus an unexplained something gives you hope.
Annette Presley:Yeah.
Nika Lawrie:And a path forward, and so that's what I love about the DNA testing. And another really good test is a hair tissue mineral analysis. So, yeah, this one really helps with figuring out your mineral balance, and especially with magnesium and everything, and it's typically not done in normal doctor's offices.
Annette Presley:Right, how do you suggest people go about getting the test? Do you think it's? Should they go request it from their physician? Is there something specific they need to kind of say, to cue in the physician, cause you know, physicians aren't always just going to hand out lab work. So how do you suggest somebody goes about getting started doing this?
Nika Lawrie:Well, honestly, with an iodine loading test they might do that one, the hair tissue mineral analysis, they most likely will not do because they don't know how to interpret it.
Annette Presley:Right.
Nika Lawrie:And same with the DNA. So you'll have to go outside for that. You can get these things on your own, but it's always better to work with somebody who understands them and can put all the pieces together. Otherwise it can get a little overwhelming. Or a functional doctor would do these things, Absolutely.
Annette Presley:So before we get to the quick fire wrap questions. If somebody wants to work with you or wants to learn more, how can they connect with you online and just build relationships?
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, so I'm on social media I think Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Getter at the Mommy Maker, and my website is getpregnantplancom and there's a link there. If you want to set up a free consultation with me, you can book that from the website.
Annette Presley:Awesome. I'll be sure to share that link in the show notes as well. Definitely so. Are you ready for the quick fire wrap question?
Nika Lawrie:I'm ready.
Annette Presley:All right, so at the first one what is your favorite or most impactful book, podcast or documentary, and why?
Nika Lawrie:your favorite or most impactful book, podcast or documentary, and why? Well, for me, the most impactful book was probably Know your Fats by Dr Mary Enig. That's the book I read that changed everything for me nutritionally.
Annette Presley:That's awesome. I'll have to look that one up. I feel like I've read all of of the functional nutrition, health, wellness books, but I have not read that one, so I will definitely have to check that one out. So next question for you and you've already given a bunch of these, but if you have one more to share, what is your best toxin-free and or eco-friendly living tip?
Nika Lawrie:well, I'd say, I, I'd actually say grounding because it's free, it's simple, um, and it really makes a huge impact.
Annette Presley:Yeah, and I know we already talked about that, but no, it's a good one. Yeah, absolutely awesome. Last question for you today is what does conscious living mean to you?
Nika Lawrie:To me, I think it means that we pay attention and we listen to our body. I know a lot of people try this and that because it worked for somebody else, and sometimes people like I've actually had. I used to work at Natural Grocers, which is a health food store, and I had a vegan come in one day and she had all kinds of digestive issues and was just horrible. So I told her okay, just try to eat some butter and some eggs, just add those to your diet. And she wouldn't do it. Some eggs, just add those to your diet, and she wouldn't do it. And it just really struck me that you have to pay attention to what is going on in your body. Just because something works for somebody else, it doesn't mean it's going to work for you, and so being conscious means that you do what's good for you, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about it.
Annette Presley:I totally agree. I love that I get so frustrated with the fad diets or the. You know the cool new eating habit that's coming through. You know the health and wellness realm when people need to understand that you know something good for me is poison for you, and it's really going to be unique and individual to each person's. You know that the buzzword bio-individuality, but it really is true.
Nika Lawrie:Yeah, and you don't have to suffer with digestive issues or sleep issues or any of this stuff. None of that is normal.
Annette Presley:No, it's not normal and they can totally be fixed. Yeah, absolutely Well, I commend you for the work you're doing. I think it's so powerful and so needed and welcome to the dark side. I'm happy to have you on this side and just thank you for sharing your, your knowledge and information with us today.
Nika Lawrie:You're welcome. Thanks so much for having me.
Annette Presley:Thank you.