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Boundless Body Radio explores the wide range of health and fitness! We will be speaking with our amazing guests about the lifestyle factors that keep them at the top- low carbohydrate, ketogenic, and carnivore nutrition, movement, stress management, and so much more! Please rate and review us, and subscribe to get all the latest content! Let us show you how to create your BOUNDLESS life!
Boundless Body Radio
Unlocking Mental Health with Ketogenic Diets: Nicole Laurent, MA, LMHC Returns! 538
Nicole Laurent is a returning guest on our show! Be sure to check out her first appearance on our podcast on episode 248, and more recently on episode 343, all about brain fog, and episode 438 of Boundless Body Radio!
Ever wondered how the food you eat impacts not just your physical health, but your mental health as well? Tune in to a groundbreaking conversation with Nicole Laurent, a licensed mental health counselor with a unique focus on using ketogenic diets along with psychotherapy to help her clients.
Nicole opens the doors of understanding to the intricate relationship between our diet, cognitive function, and brain metabolism. Our enlightening discussion explores the profound improvements people experience when they make significant changes in their eating habits. We delve into the concept of "ketopenic" and discuss how the ketogenic diet can help balance neurotransmitters, improve membrane health, and reduce oxidative stress and neuro inflammation in the brain.
In the last part of the episode, Nicole shares poignant insights on the challenges and benefits of long-term dietary changes and the importance of support in initiating these lifestyle changes. Join us as we navigate this enlightening journey of exploration into the potential of ketogenic diets as a standard of care for mental illness and neurological disorders!
Find Nicole at-
https://mentalhealthketo.com/
IG- @mentalhealthketo
TW- @KetoCounselor
YT- @nicolelaurentLMHC
FB- @thatketocounselor
FREE E-BOOK!
Special love to-
STEM-Talk!! Great podcast!
https://commongroundfilm.org/
https://app.ce-go.com/metabolic-psychiatry-understanding-how-modifying-metabolism-can-create-mental-health
Find Boundless Body at-
Hello and welcome to another episode of Boundless Body Radio. I'm your host, casey Ruff, and today we have an absolutely awesome and amazing guest who I am so happy to reintroduce to you now. Nicole Laurent is a returning guest on our show. Be sure to check out her first appearance on our podcast on episode 248, more recently on episode 343 all about brain fog, and episode 438 of Boundless Body Radio.
Speaker 1:Nicole has been a licensed mental health counselor in Washington state for over 15 years. Her current practice focuses on helping clients with anxiety, depression and other mental health issues to transition to a ketogenic diet or uses other nutritional therapies to compliment their psychotherapy work. She holds several specialized training certifications allowing her to work with underlying biological factors and mental illness. Nicole works with clients via telehealth and helps people explore medication-free options for their mental health, using research and evidence-based nutritional and functional psychiatry, so that people can get their lives back without side effects or dependence on Big Pharma. In 2021, she created MentalHealthKetocom, a wonderful blog devoted to educating people about ketogenic diets for mental health and neurological issues. You can find her on that website, which again is MentalHealthKetocom, or on Instagram at MentalHealthKeto. Nicole Laurent, what an absolute honor it is to welcome you back to Boundless Body Radio.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I love coming on this podcast we love hosting you.
Speaker 1:I think you are our very first four-time returning guest on our show. Congratulations, Thank you. Yeah, that's good. I think I just have an auto reply on my email that says if Nicole emails or messages and has something new she wants to talk to, just automatically send a reply right off the bat and say, yep, come on, let's do this as soon as possible. This one we've had marked up for quite a while, a few months, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I reached out because I'm going to be providing some training for non-prescribing mental health professionals around metabolic psychiatry principles and how to support people on ketogenic diets, and I was very excited about it and I knew that your listeners would be really interested in learning about that a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I cannot wait to deep dive into that with you. You are also a prolific writer, as we talked about in the introduction. You're also really prolific on social media and I've noticed recently you've been not posting nearly as frequently and I kind of thought to myself where has Nicole gone? And I think I figured it out. It must be that we finally have the exact, perfect drug, the best pharma that we can give people. It must have been developed since last time we talked to her. So now she's got nothing to do and that's why she's not posting anymore. Am I right?
Speaker 2:No, not so much. So what's happening is, every time I go to one of these conferences and I get to meet all of these brilliant people helping other people learn the ways that they can feel better, I seem to take on a new project and I expand in what I'm doing in some way. So what's happened is that we've hit critical mass with Nicole going to different low-carb conferences, and I have finally gotten to the point where I can't fit it all in and I used to really pride myself on oh, I've got a super balanced life and there's all this space I can just take up. Well, that's not happening anymore. I have to actually get the things done that I'm excited about. So that's all it is. I'll be back posting a lot more soon.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, I guess that's good news that we'll be seeing more of you around, but probably not so good news that we probably haven't taken a lot of really good pharmacological steps since the last time we talked and probably since the first time we talked a few years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I haven't seen any miracle cures come across my desk or with my patients at this point.
Speaker 1:Wow, it's very interesting. Last month I was in San Diego for this imposing for metabolic health. You were there, I think, this last weekend for a different conference. It's probably a good problem that there's so many conferences now that are kind of in this area that I didn't even really know about it until you told me about it and you said something off air that really blew my mind. I didn't know. It was the eighth annual conference. That's the thing about this information. This stuff is not new. We didn't figure this out last week, like this stuff has been around for a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's the eighth global symposium for ketogenic therapies and I think they do. It's the first one I've been to. I'm an INX member now, an international neurological society for probably doing a ketogenic international neurological ketogenic society, inx, which is very in a line with what I'm doing. I'd rather be a member of that than the American Psychological Association any day, because I think that that is super useful. So I'm very excited about that membership and that nonprofit. But they were putting on this eighth global symposium for ketogenic therapies and it was amazing and I posted about it because there was this huge conference room full of ketogenic dietitians trained to use ketogenic metabolic therapies for epilepsy and lute one disorder and these different conditions. But these are all people that are interested in helping people use this for different therapies and different modalities like mental illness and neurological issues.
Speaker 2:There is so much help out there, so I know that there is. I often hear this on Twitter or Instagram or whatever and it's like I can't find anybody to help me with this. I can't find anybody to help me with this. There is an army of really well trained dietitians ready to help you with this. There are so many good programs. Ali Houston has his MetSci program. I have my online program. I think that if you found a prescriber that was willing to send you off to a ketogenic dietitian, I think you could get help that way. I'm about to create an army of mental health counselors who know how to support you on this, so there's so much help out there. Don't feel like it's just a matter of you're going to have to work on finding it yourself to some degree, and podcasts like this are so important for people to get access to this treatment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I totally agree. I guess there's several reasons why somebody should stick around San Diego a little bit longer. I should have stayed for an extra month so I could have attended this and I wonder if you got the same sense of the dichotomy, of kind of what you were just describing. You're in this conference room, people are bought in, you're discussing research. It's incredible. We're changing the narrative around health with low carbohydrate and ketogenic diets, and it's amazing. And then you walk outside and then you realize like, oh, like we're still. We've got a long, long way to go. Did you get a sense of that?
Speaker 2:as well. You know, I am, I am. I don't know if it's because I'm a. I'm a mental health counselor and I've got some rad tools, but I am really good at not focusing on what is and keeping my energy and my momentum focused on what is becoming and what I want.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 2:And so I really, um, I might notice it, but I'm like doesn't matter, there's nothing that's going to stop this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fantastic. I feel like we're, you know, kind of changing the tide and that the pendulum will swing at some point or another where too many people are just getting helped by this information. Um, I told you off air as well that the only thing I did to prepare for this conversation was listen to the three other episodes that you and I have done together, and I would say for the listener, it's absolutely worth checking out all three of those episodes. They don't need to be chronological, the way you check them out. I think there's awesome information on each one of those and they can be listened to in any order and they would be relevant and helpful for the listener. You have such a great way of explaining things, and part of that is your own story, which is really unique. You have such an interesting way of coming to diet um to to help you with your own mental health and then become something that you use as a tool with your clients. So would you mind kind of sharing your own story and how you've gotten to this place now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'll share, like the, I'll share the short version. Yeah, so I I developed a chronic illness, a chronic neurological condition that caused chronic pain. I tried all the things, went to doctors, was basically talked into, told that, uh, pain pills would be the only option for me, and I was one of those people who could not get off of them. I had an operation that helped my pain and fix that for me, but then I was stuck on those medications for a very long period of time and I got cognitive decline and impairment from it. Um, and when I finally got off with an experimental protocol, um, my brain was not working at all. I was had stage one Alzheimer's symptoms. I didn't have Alzheimer's, but that was my level of impairment. And then I listened to podcasts and, uh, dom DiAgostino was on uh, stem talk talking about its use for Alzheimer's, and that got me excited about, oh, maybe I can, you know, maybe I won't have to retire, maybe I will be able to remember, you know, more than one digit at a time. So, uh. So I did that and took me a little while to get the macros right and the carb restriction right, but once it worked, it really worked and I felt the lights come on. You hear people who use ketogenic diets for mental illness and neurological disorders Describe it like that. The lights come on, um, and that started my journey to feeling better, and part of what I noticed was that my mood was very different on my ketogenic diet than what it was off of the ketogenic diet. So I came.
Speaker 2:I didn't come from a standard American diet. I came from a whole foods, functional nutrition, eating all the things I thought I was supposed to eat. But the level of carbohydrate restriction, um, and the ketones I think that that produced made all the difference for me, and I noticed that my mood was better. I wasn't as easily overwhelmed. I didn't have to use as many of my, my rad therapist tools to get through the day or to deal with anxiety. When it came up. They just didn't come up. It was just really kind of transformative. And so then I said, oh, my God, my, my people need to know about this. These patients that come to me and I'm their fifth therapist or they're on their seventh medication trial, or whatever they, they have a right to know about this. And so that's how I started to put it in my practice and tell people about it.
Speaker 1:Now I remember you telling me you had a bit of trepidation, especially in the beginning, because this isn't standard of care. Well, you, know the standard of care is to put people on different medications, maybe double up on medications or switch things out from time to time. What I mean was it just simply that it was so effective that eventually you just couldn't shut up about it. Basically, Basically.
Speaker 2:So at first I was very sneaky and I was like, hey, I've heard this really helps. You want to watch this video or listen to this podcast? So I was very kind of gentle with it because you are supposed to work within your scope, and I had this lovely I still see her. She doesn't do a ketogenic diet. I still see her and she said are you a nutritionist? Are you even supposed to be sharing this information with me? And I was like, oh God, she's right, I don't have any training. I'm probably out of my scope, even though I know a lot about this. So I went back and I got some additional training and it was me taking Georgia's clinician training on how to implement and monitor ketogenic diets, specifically for mental illness, where I saw all these doctors and prescribers and nurses and I was the only therapist at the time but they were all doing this and I was like, clearly, this is OK. Clearly I have this training and I can talk about this openly, blatantly and, quite frankly, passionately with people as an option.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ok, so speculation. You'll never know for sure. But just to ask you, since you're the expert, what would have happened in your life? How would your life have continued if you had never found this information out? What do you have stabilized at some point? Would you have found the right medication? Like what do you see with people out there? What would your life have continued like?
Speaker 2:With mine. So after my detoxification off of those medications I was very impaired. I was very ill from that experience and my brain got a little bit better. It stabilized at a particular level that was not great, not good, not where I would want. Impaired my ability to do a lot of things I used to be able to do, like read, be able to follow a TV show and know what's going on, Like it was really bad. So I think that I think I would be quite impaired. I don't think I'd be able to do the work I'm doing. I certainly wouldn't be able to write a blog. I wouldn't have been able to go back for additional schooling and I think that as your cognitive impairment gets worse, as your functioning goes down, I think people's lives get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller in order to accommodate where their functioning is at.
Speaker 2:When we can read, we don't read the books that are a big cognitive load anymore. We pick the simple ones. Pretty soon we aren't reading at all. We're not watching the dramatic lots of storylines, movies, the foreign films anymore. We're watching something very light, maybe even children's movies. Quite frankly, Don't write into Casey saying that I'm bad talking Disney. That's not my point.
Speaker 2:But the point is is you make your life smaller? People interactions are some of the highest cognitive loads that people do, and so what we find is that people and I think myself, peopleing was hard. Peopleing was really hard and exhausting and there would be brain fog days after because that's such a big cognitive load and I think my life would be very, very different. I think I would have joy. I think I would do my best to be present and feel present. When you have cognitive issues to that level, it really does affect your quality of life.
Speaker 1:It sounded like from you telling that story in previous times and other episodes that it was pretty bad and without the support of your husband it would have been way more difficult for you. So I appreciate you sharing that. Are you ever surprised by how much, how many things can be actually reversed when people change their diets? It's not just like this will get you stable and you won't get worse, but the level of improvement. Does that ever surprise you?
Speaker 2:It does, it does, yeah, it does. So I don't get to work with too many people with moderate stage Alzheimer's or that sort of thing. I'm not in a neurologist's office. They don't come on my doorstep looking for help necessarily, although I do have some people with mild cognitive impairment that are in my program. What I often see is stabilization, but more often I see improvement. I see and it's funny with cognitive symptoms, sometimes the spouse or the people around them are the ones to notice the difference. First, you're finding words a lot better, or you did that thing and you weren't like tired, or you followed that conversation. They'll point things out before the other person. If I ask them, how are you doing, they're like, ah, it's the same. But then I get their husband or wife on the group, call the live Q&A and they're like oh no, they found some really big words that I haven't heard them say in a long time. So it's stuff like that. Sometimes it takes a while.
Speaker 1:And to think also that the family member is going to be so impressed with how much better the other person is doing that they might try it themselves and notice the benefit themselves. So one of the other episodes I listened to before having our chat today was an episode I did with Dr Chris Palmer, author of Brain Energy wonderful book. I invited Dr Nick Norwitz onto the show to interview him and I was just kind of a participant. We also had Brett Lloyd on the show. He reversed his deep depression and suicidality on a carnivore diet and I see both sides on this and so I want to get your opinion and your observation as far as this goes.
Speaker 1:Chris Palmer made the point that a ketogenic diet is not that easy. It's not easy to do. There are some situations, I think, that are warranted. Maybe they don't have the education, they don't have the money, carbohydrates taste really good and there's that one side of people that say look, doing this is really really, really difficult. Dr Thomas Seyfried is another one I personally pushed back on when he says this is too difficult to do.
Speaker 1:A lot of people are not doing this and I showed you, before we got on the air, the foot of somebody I did a consultation with four years ago. That foot is really nasty, amputated just this last week, and you think, like for these people maybe it is too hard. But Nick Norwitz answers and says, well, it's not so hard for me. And Brett Lloyd answers and he says I eat burgers and I'm not depressed, and I do the same thing. I can eat meat and just meat, and I feel such a lower amount of anxiety that's not that hard. What are you noticing with compliance on getting on this diet? Is this very, very difficult or can this be very, very easy?
Speaker 2:It depends on the person and what is going on for them. I just heard Chris on a podcast recently and he said something out loud. He often does this. He'll verbalize something and I'll be like, yes, I'm so glad you said that. I have that experience too. But he's kind of he's often the first to kind of say it out loud and I thought it was really great and he was like two weeks into the diet.
Speaker 2:He said something along the lines of you're going to tell me this is too hard, that you can't do it, that there's no way you're going to get better. This is not the ticket, this is not for you, this is not an alignment with who you are and what you want or whatever. And he talked about how he tells them look, in three months you're going to tell me how easy this is. You're going to tell me that this is doable. I could. Maybe. I feel so good that maybe I could do this my whole life or something like it or something close to it. And he's right. That's what happens. If I have someone who's going to drop out of working with me, it's going to be within two, maybe three weeks and I think that's as Chris says in this podcast. That's when they start to miss their foods, their comfort foods. That's when they start to try to go out or maybe their partner is bringing stuff in they start to struggle a little bit. So there's that. I also tell people you're not going to have the same brain, so they find that it can be very, very difficult. But a brain on ketones works better and that means it plans better. It isn't overwhelmed by cooking where before it was overwhelmed by cooking. It isn't over. It works better. Your brain works better. Your motivation goes up. There's a change in, you know, transporter function. There's great things that happen to your brain on a ketogenic diet and so you're not always going to be struggling to do your ketogenic diet with the same brain that you're using leading up to your ketogenic diet, trying to figure out how to reduce your carbs and what to eat instead.
Speaker 2:And I always tell people having mental illness is way harder than being on a ketogenic diet. I promise you you are already dealing with something super hard. And then they say well, I don't want to add this on. I'm already dealing with this really difficult mental illness, with these horrible symptoms. Why would I add this additional hard thing on? And I tell them because the only way out is through. The only way out is through If this is a treatment that's going to work for you, the only way out is through and they'll. You know they will endure medication side effects that I would never put up with. That I would tell the doctor forget you, I'm not taking this. And they see that as part of the core right Part of the process of having a mental illness and dealing with this hard thing. Well, a ketogenic diet is an adjustment, it's just, it's another. It's something that you have to kind of work through to get to the other side to see if it's going to be helpful for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point In this episode with Chris Palmer. Here you mentioned things like people are doing electroshock therapy. People are doing deep medications that have crazy side effects. People get cancer, they poison themselves and get irradiated.
Speaker 1:Like people are already doing hard things, and one of the things that you just mentioned was one of my favorite things that I've ever heard you mention on our show, which is that it's it's already hard. If you're already going to the doctor to complain about some of these things. It's already difficult. Changing your eating is not going to be more difficult than what you're already doing. It's already difficult. I love that point. That really stuck with me last time. The other thing that is my absolute favorite, favorite, favorite thing to get you to do is to talk about the science behind what you mentioned before, that a brain on ketones operates differently than a brain on glucose. You are just the best at waxing poetic about ketones and the ketogenic diet. I love hearing it. Can you explain a little bit more about the science as to why this actually works in our brains and the whole rest of our bodies?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's. So when we, when we look at, when we look at why ketogenic diets work we again this has been used in epilepsy for a very long time and it's and it's the best study diet we really kind of understand a lot of the mechanisms that are involved. We don't understand all of them. Of course, there's great research, really interesting and exciting research, going on to try to figure out the rest of the pieces, but they, they are pleiotropic. So a ketogenic diet provides pleiotropic effects and all that big word means is just that it doesn't just do one good thing, it does many good things and it does it in a synergistic way with one another that I think medications just can't touch, because those are touching like one or two kind of pathway that throws everything else off. So ketogenic diet, so the way that I think about ketogenic diets and the effects on brains, I tend to use these four areas brain hyper metabolism, neurotransmitter imbalances, oxidative stress and neuro inflammation, and that's, that's my grounding. But I could, you could really go on in all these different directions about what ketogenic diets do. So they, oh, I got to tell you, I got a great one to tell you. So I was at the eighth global symposium for ketogenic therapies in San Diego and I was playing around in the poster sessions reading all the posters and I came across this poster that I got really excited about. You know, we always talk about ketones like it's the ketones, it's the ketone level and there is a correlation between ketone level and symptom improvement that we're beginning to see in some of these studies. I think that matters. But there's other pleiotropic effects and this is one of them. So this guy had a poster where he was using I believe it was fMRI. It was an MRI and he was looking at the level of glutathione specifically in the brain in pop in ketogenic populations and he found a seven to 14 fold increase in glutathione production in the brain in ketogenic populations. So that's not necessary. I don't. I don't know. Maybe that's brain energy to some degree Right, maybe it takes energy to make all that glutathione, but that is really exciting. Like you just can't get that with anything else. And for your listeners who don't know what glutathione is, that is the, I would say, the most powerful antioxidant that your body makes in your body to clean up the hot mess that is oxidative stress, and you know what happens with neuro inflammation, and so that is just one of the really powerful factors. And that and it was reproduced. So like three posters down there was an animal study looking at the exact same thing, finding the exact same results. So right there in the room you had an animal study and a human study finding the exact same thing. So, and that's just about glutathione. So there's a lot of really exciting things.
Speaker 2:But it helps with neurotransmitters. The effects on glutamate and GABA are well documented in the literature and have been an epilepsy for quite a long time, and we don't know exactly why it happens. We have lots of theories. Some say my gut microbiome. Some say the brain is making neurotransmitters in a less hostile environment, right, and so it goes better, it goes well.
Speaker 2:Things, things change over because glutamate is supposed to convert into GABA. Gaba is a chill, you got this, I feel you feel good kind of relaxation type of neurotransmitter. And glutamate you need for learning, you need for memory. It's an important thing. It has keeps your brain awake, so to speak. It's not like caffeine, but you do need it. And but we have environments in which that goes way up and it becomes neurotoxic and it increases oxidative stress in the brain. So we know that one.
Speaker 2:We're less clear about the neurotransmitter effects for the other ones, but what we do suspect is happening is that it increases membrane health In the in the brain, so those little membranes that are supposed to fire the action potentials that's supposed to be involved in the neurotransmitters, how they're used and their availability improves. And so we think that transporters become, or receptors become, more sensitive. And that makes sense to me really, because when we put people on ketogenic diet, suddenly their T3 goes down, but they don't have any thyroid symptoms. Their body's making less T3. Maybe they're more sensitive oh, their insulin goes down, right, but they're, you know. And so I think that I think that these receptors in the body become resensitized on a ketogenic diet, but I don't actually have any science to back that up. That I'm that I've read recently.
Speaker 1:It's just absolutely sensational and it just blows my mind all the time that one intervention optimizes everything and every year we get more and more science that that irons it down even further. It's more and more and more true all of the time and every different way that you can look at it, and it matches up with biology and evolution and all of these different things. All are saying the same thing. It's incredible and again it's becoming more and more and more true. When we have an idea in science, it usually tends to go in one direction or the other, like we start with the idea and if over time, there's holes and gaps and we call them paradoxes, like we probably don't have the right idea. But when things are getting more and more and more true all the time, you're you're heading down the right path.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've heard so, jeff Follick. This is twice now I've heard him say this. I can't remember the context of the first time, but the he's Jeff Follick, who is a brilliant researcher. He was at the eighth global symposium that I just came from and he used the term ketopenic, meaning an absence of ketone production or insufficient ketone production, and I think that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2:If ketones are stabilizing, like if you. When you and I've heard neuroscientists talk about this on researcher calls and stuff They've they talk about I think that's on metabolic mind. There's a video with a researcher who I can't remember now, one of the old ones from the very first metabolic retreats that the bazookies put on, and they said that ketones stabilize neural networks and that, while you might be afraid of ketones, your brain looks forward to you making ketones every night because of the stabilizing effects. And if you have they didn't say this part, but this makes sense If you have hyperinsulinemia and you're having a giant sugar meal before dinner or before bed, at dinner and snacks you're, you're not going to get your insulin levels down in the night enough in order to make those stabilizing ketones and so if I'm pretty sure they're stabilizing to a lot of other symptoms, systems other than the brain, you know, because we see this reversal of chronic disease that happens.
Speaker 2:And so Jeff Bullock is using this term now to almost. I think it's. I think it's very brave and I think he I think he must be awfully sure to be using such a term in the scientific community. He must feel very good about the data to support such a term, to suggest that humans need them and that an op and absence of ketones is potentially the problem. I've also heard the term ketopenic hyperinsulinia, insulinia, to kind of bring those two together. But yeah, I think that I think that I think that it's ability to reverse chronic illness is a little bit of a clue that maybe we were supposed to be having be in that state more, more so than not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is absolutely wonderful. I love that word and I look I've been in this world for long enough to know that, like outside of, like Instagram influencers, the people doing the research, the scientists you know to some extent clinical practice doctors they don't. They don't make claims in this world unless they're very sure of what they're talking about and they'll tell you what they know and what they don't know. They're very clear and apparent with that. Chris Palmer is a wonderful example of that. He'll tell you if he doesn't know and there's still a lot that we don't know. But, yeah, the heaps of evidence that we now have, it just keeps stacking up. It's absolutely wonderful. I did want to talk about this conference. What was your experience like? What were some of your favorite presentations? What things, what other things did you come home from that conference having learned that you're super excited about?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that conference was. There was a great presentation on ketogenic diets for brain tumors. There was a great one for MS. That I thought was really great. It was such a. It was just. It was many days.
Speaker 2:You asked me. I'm like, oh my gosh, it was a blur. It was a blur in a good way, you would. You would come to your hotel room at the end of the night with your brain full, which is always a sign of the best conferences, right, where your brain is just full and you can't take any more good stuff in. But it was a beautiful.
Speaker 2:It was a beautiful medley of science and talking about pathways and receptors and you know pictures of the biology with really brilliant scientists and practical application. So these dieticians, they're very well versed in the science, but they are also just brilliant with application. They have some really great keto products that they've been using in the epilepsy population to get people's ratios up to higher levels and higher. You know MCT oil and stuff. Like they've got some some great shakes and they've got lots of really good products. And so and just the conversation about how to implement ketogenic diets in families and how to get support people on board, how to adjust macros, different things to consider with more fragile, fragile, ill populations. So I just thought it was. I just thought it was brilliant.
Speaker 2:I I mostly was excited about that glutathione thing. I don't think I took anything in. After that I brought Jan over. I was like Jan, you got to look at this, you know, and so so there was that. And then Denise Potter. I loved her presentation because she presented some case studies. If you haven't had her on she's, she's, have you had Denise?
Speaker 1:I have not. I know I've reached out before, so that you just gave me a note to go back and reach out again. Make sure we connect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Denise, Denise is lovely and she is amazing and she presented I think it was two or three case studies of people with mental illness getting better and thriving on a ketogenic diet, which was always really nice. Yeah, so that I guess that was. My favorite was the poster presentation with the glutathione, and I think I really loved Denise's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing. Well, I love the, the case studies. Right, like we, you and I have talked, and you know we're not going to get tons of clinical controlled trials exploring the stuff. There's not money in ketogenic research but we do have tons of case studies and you've worked with people in different capacities for years and years and years. What are some of your favorite case studies, some favorite results? They could be more recent, they could be ones that really, really stood out to you. Just some of the ones that that first come to mind when I asked you the question.
Speaker 2:Well, I, I just had two recent, like yesterday. I had two people who I think are in remission or on their way to remission, so, and one of them I. You know I never share case studies or stories unless I get their permission to talk about them, because that's awful, you know your therapist is telling your story and even though they're not telling your name, it still feels very intrusive so you can't do that. So I was checking in with her to see if it was okay if I talked about her on, because I knew I was meeting with you. And she said yes, and she was very excited about that and she wanted to know what podcast, because I think she's going to listen.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so this is a. This was a 19 year old girl with diagnosis undetermined, but had auditory and visual hallucinations. So they were figuring out diagnosis, I think still so schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder type of diagnosis. And I got to meet her. So her, her dad, is carnivore already and he was knowing that this would likely be helpful for her and she had been in conventional psychiatric treatment. And you know, 19 someone, someone has their, has their own, their own mind. She 19, she might be 17. I think she's 17. I'm sorry she's 17. Yes, because I couldn't put her in my online program, so we're doing sorry, so she's 17. And she's still in school. So so they met with me and she was in a really bad place. She was highly suicidal and her dad was on the call with her and she was trying to decide you know what way to go. So, just in a really bad place and, and I said so here's, here's where you are and you are about to go into. You want to go into a psychiatric hospital, and I understand that, and let me tell you where that leads, where that goes, and and it's possible that you could be stabilized and stay on the same medications for a lifetime, or or close to it, although that's unusual, that's possible, though, and and that could be your, your way to feel better. I don't think you're going to like psychiatric hospital. It's not a fun place. It's not, it's not a. You know it's not a great place for a lot of people. You know that you don't get a lot of freedom. I don't know if, for listeners who have been in a psychiatric hospital, you know for stabilization, they know what I'm talking about. It's not, it's not a happy place for them and and or we can try this treatment. This treatment is here. This is what it looks like. This is kind of what the meals this is, this is expectations probably take three to four months, maybe a little bit longer, and there's big adjustments that kind of go with that.
Speaker 2:And I could see on the call that she was just kind of shutting down, because it's a when you're already in a mentally bad place, making some big decision about your treatment is just hard. And then she's got her dad yammering at her. Right, you need to try this thing. You know, although he was really great, apparent, right he's, he wants what's best for her, he wants her to feel better. He doesn't really care how, but he said he suspected, and, and I said here's the thing you can't make a wrong decision right now. There's no, this is not a life or death decision for you. This we got to keep you safe. That's what comes first. You do what you feel like you need to do to be safe and to stay safe. And if at any time, you don't like the path you are on, I am here and you can contact me. You can always take this path. And if you can't find me 20 years from now and you decide you want to do this, then you'll find someone else there's, there's lots of us out there. You can't make a wrong decision today. And I could see that that kind of she relaxed a little bit in that and I would say not even a week later her dad contacted me and said that she would like to meet with me and so we started treatment and we started with ketogenic metabolic therapy, ketogenic diet, and we started just reducing, having her trap, beginning to reduce carbohydrates little by little, talking about how you got to start to get rid of the Chick-fil-A, even though it's like a low they got. The low carb option is not you know so. So we started doing that work and she started to actually improve. Before I got her down on down very much on therapeutic carbohydrate restriction.
Speaker 2:She's she come in and she's saying, you know, I didn't have a visual hallucination today and I was like good, good, let's keep going. And so she, you know she, she's doing great. And so I saw her. I went, I traveled to San Diego. I didn't get to see her, I saw her twice a week for a little while there and I think that extra support in the beginning is really important. I'm not sure once a week is enough. I almost feel like we should break it up into two two a week for people trying to do it for mental illness. But she, so I missed her for a whole week.
Speaker 2:I was like, okay, well, let's see how she's doing. And she was all smiles, she was great, she's had no visual or auditory hallucinations and she, you know, we put her on pretty strict macros. You know, I believe we're at on a 2.5 to three type of macro adjustment ratio and she, you know, she kind of is naturally in, she's almost doing a modified icons and she's doing ketones of two, two, three, 2.5, three. She's just kind of living in that area and we just had to really increase her fat. But she's doing fantastic. We move. We move to once a week because, you know, we just want to kind of stay in touch.
Speaker 2:But she really wanted you to know that this was was a miracle, her words a miracle and life changing for her. And she was excited that I tell her story on this podcast and, I'm assuming, other places, because, because this has been such a big thing for her. So she was all smiles, she wasn't overwhelmed, I didn't even do therapy with her. She had a therapist when she came that she was already working with, so and her prescriber is being very cooperative and is very excited about the changes and is adjusting medication accordingly. So she started to improve very, very quickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's borderline difficult to not get emotional over that. That is absolutely amazing. Okay, perfect example. Then, 17 years old, I remember my brain was like at 17, I didn't have schizophrenia, but my brain was not fully developed. Let me just tell you around friends in school, this is about the time that your parents are idiots and they don't know anything about anything. This is about the what I would consider some of the least compliant populations you could ever find, and she has found a way to do it. She's compliant and sees the benefit. Has been extremely challenging for her.
Speaker 2:Well, she's got family support. She really has that family support. So her mom when I look at her chronometer and I look at her food her mom is always making these amazing dishes that are ketogenic the whole this mom and dad feeds the whole family keto, for the most part, I believe and they just have that. They have that support. So I think that for young and old populations, having that support in your family makes it exponentially easier.
Speaker 2:This is a family that's like we're going to do what it takes, tell us what to do, and they and there was nothing I told them to do that they didn't like okay, we can do this, we can figure out a way to make this happen, and, and so that was a very you know, that was a great, you know functioning family that way and but not everybody has a family like that and they still need that extra support to get to get that going and and there's lots of psychological variables that are a part of that. But when you are miserable enough, you really will do what it takes if you believe that it's possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just thinking that when pain increases, hearing improves. In the beginning, yeah, it might be difficult to avoid Chick-fil-A. We just lost them as a as a sponsor anyway. But it's like you can, you just lost them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're out now. Shoot, we'll get back to dry board.
Speaker 1:But but you're right, like when, when you're at that level of suffering, eating beef and eggs is not that challenging. It can actually be absolutely delicious, If you ask me, I did have a question too about the diagnosis. That's a very young age. Is that a thing that is diagnosed as much as it was in the past and younger generations? I always think of that as kind of something that happens to older people. Am I, am I wrong about that?
Speaker 2:So psychotic disorders they, and maybe I'm maybe I'm not up on the latest research, but I'm pretty sure it's similar. It usually hits in young adulthood and I believe we are seeing it at younger and younger ages. But which makes sense if it's a brain metabolic disorder and there's nutritional insufficiencies going on sooner than that makes sense, but it happens at a young age. There's also a subset where it's late-onset schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, which might be from a different etiology. I don't know, maybe not, maybe that's the insulin resistance that kind of builds up over a lifetime and causes issues in that way. But yeah, it's not uncommon for a psychotic disorder to take someone down, so to speak, and limit their functioning at a younger age in what some people would say is their prime.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, the other question I had is about the institutions, the hospitals, mental illness hospitals. Are they like as bad as what I would imagine? I've never been to one, but you see them on TV. I imagine they're not like padded walls and straight jackets and everything, but what are they like? How bad are they? I wouldn't think they're fun places to hang out at, but I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'm sure that there are nicer ones that exist, for sure, there's probably private ones, but what I hear from my patients is it's a little bit of a dark place. So imagine you're a teenager and you're in a bad place, but you like freedom to some degree, and there's, you know, you can't have certain things, you can't have belts, you can't have things that you can harm yourself with, and that, of course, makes sense because they're at risk, and it's just. It's just, it's a difficult place. I mean, I'm sure that I mean I've visited people, not patients, but I've visited family members in those places, and they can be really important for safety. Like, I'm not bad math and I'm like if and I will tell people who have family members where they think, oh, I need to stay up all night to keep this person safe, no, no, no, no, you, you, they need to be hospitalized, because we can't put that on you, you can't take that responsibility.
Speaker 2:To keep someone safe in that way, that's not good for you, because God forbid you not off right. This is just not a cannibal solution. We don't do it that way, and so so they are absolutely life-saving and they are absolutely critical. What I find, though, is that they really use a lot of medication and they people come out of those hospitals highly, highly medicated, and that most of the time spent after is by prescribers trying to titrate them down off the medications and finding this spot where they're still safe, but they won't fall asleep in the middle of their sessions yeah, and they can actually hold a thought because the cognitive symptoms are great. So so they're valuable and they're important, but I just don't see them having people come in and out of them as a long-term solution for mental illness.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. Okay, I don't know if you're familiar with Hal Cranmer, excuse me, he owns, oh, you are familiar. So so if you follow him on social media, he owns all those assisted living facilities and these people need care and need help and they're, you know, aging and they've got dementia and Alzheimer's and they're improving and you see them in videos dancing and they're eating carnivore. And Julie, who we hosted on our show, entered his facility about a year ago. Right now, at 550 pounds, she's leaving the facility in the 300s and decreasing. She was losing a pound a day at one point, eating carnivore and doing strength training. And so you just contrast, like those two stories, like what's going to happen if you end up at an institution that's going to give you all the meds versus let's, let's change the diet and let's see what happens. These people are happy and energetic and a lot of them are leaving. It's wonderful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love Hal. I follow him on Twitter.
Speaker 1:He's the best. I love that guy. He's awesome. Yeah, well, okay. So so you have helped people in many, many different capacities. That story that you just told is amazing, heartwarming. I absolutely love it. You've you've worked with people one-on-one. You've told me in the past that it's limiting, and I certainly understand that. It's part of why I wanted to start a podcast, get the message out to a wider audience. We all seem to have like a passion for this. Once you get it, it just kind of grabs you and you just want to share it with everybody, anybody who's willing to listen. So I've heard you talk about transitioning your business from doing you know one-on-one to more like group things. You could reach more people. You started your blog, you're increasing your reach and now you're going out there as you said earlier this episode, creating an army of people who know how to do this. Tell us about that journey and tell us what this is. It's so cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, um, a lot of people think about. They think the big obstacle to ketogenic diets being used as a standard for care, particularly for mental illness or neurological disorders, is big pharma, and I think that might be the case. But there's this whole other subset that is a potential threat to people learning about this treatment, and that is clinical psychology. And the reason I say that is because in clinical psychology there is a there is eating disorder specialists or specialization, and in eating disorder, specialization restriction is thought to cause eating disorders. Restricting any type of food group or any type of food, even ultra processed foods, is considered eating disorder, creating and or maintaining or exacerbating and, um, and there is a disconnect. So in clinical psychology we are supposed to use a bio-cycle social model, we think of it as a pillar, these pillars, right, and they teach us some bio in clinical psychology programs, but we're told to leave those alone. So you're, it's okay to tell someone to sleep more, it's all. It's okay to tell someone to eat healthy food, whatever that means, it's okay. So, the, so the, and it's okay, it's extra okay, to tell them to take their medications and to be able to talk with them about the mechanisms by with med medications are supposed to work or not work, right, and so that's okay, we can do that, but we're told to leave that to doctors and to keep our nose out of that. To keep our nose clean, keep our, you know, but we're supposed to work from a bio-psycho-social model.
Speaker 2:So there's a huge disconnect between nutritional biochemistry what scientists tell us about ultra processed foods, for example and how they are engineered, substances that provide food addiction you know it's, it's an addictive substance, um and the clinical psychology practice. So they. There are clinical psychologists who will get very upset with you if you talk about processed, highly processed foods being addictive, because all food is okay, right, we can't restrict, we can't, and and so my and I don't remember where I again this happened after a conference, um, where I decided that this was going to be really important, that this was an area that we needed to look at and work with was that there are people going to mental health professionals that practice clinical psychology, doctoral level and below that are saying, hey, I've heard that a ketogenic diet might be able to help me. What do you think? That are being warned away from it and told that they will develop an eating disorder if they go near that, or the therapist is sharing their own personal biases about nutrition. That might not actually be what we understand from a human biochemistry standpoint, as as what that other person should do. So psychologists are supposed to have very healthy boundaries about professional biases or personal biases, and we're supposed to keep those out of the therapy room. At least that's what I was taught 15 years ago, right, or whatever. Um, and I'm pretty sure that's still part of the program, but it's leaky, and so, um, it's, it's. You know, we have to keep track of a lot in the therapy room. So we've got ethics, we've got professional boundaries, we've got you know, you name it, we're, we're overloaded in there. So I totally get it, but, um, but I think that that is dangerous. Because what if Matt Bazuki had gone to a psychologist that they knew and trusted and was warned off of the ketogenic diet? Right, he'd still be suffering. What if he hadn't found the psychiatrist that helped him? Every day I think a little bit about I wonder how many people are being told not to do this that it could be the one treatment that saves their life or saves their quality of life.
Speaker 2:I decided that a CEU, a continuing education, needs to be offered for damage control. There needs to be an education. Psychologists and other allied mental health professionals that are non-prescribers need to have a basic understanding of what ketogenic diets are and how they work in order to not do harm In intentionally. They need a reminder about their professional boundaries, about nutrition information. They need to understand how to work on a treatment team for someone who is wanting to use a ketogenic diet. That's the case. We're going to leave the nutrition to the dietitian, who is highly trained, and if they want them to eat meat and lots of fat, that is none of our business as a psychologist. There is a reason they are having to meet that meat and fat.
Speaker 2:How do I support? How do I, as a vegan, as a vegan therapist, how do I learn to keep my biases under control so that I can support this person in this treatment that has an evidence base for these disorders? How do I use my existing theoretical orientation? Not everybody is a behaviorist. Not everyone knows how to do a missing link analysis or a behavioral chain analysis, or who knows how to do CBT. But there are other valid orientations like EMDR, art therapy, interpersonal. These are all evidence-based. A person-centered. These are all evidence-based theoretical orientations that psychologists and other mental health professionals use to help people, support them and affect change and validate and do all the wonderful things that we offer. They just need a little bit of training in how to focus their target in to help specifically support someone on a ketogenic diet.
Speaker 2:That's what I decided that I needed to do. I made one and it's happening October 27th. It's NBCC accredited, so National Board Certified Counselor accredited. Most psychologists can accept that association, those types of credits. There's a few states that require American Psychological Association credits but don't worry, there's one that's happening in Boston that is APA accredited, american Psychological Association accredited. That is being put on by Ellen Horn and I'll give you the link for that so you can put that in the show notes. If you can't make mine on the 27th of October, don't worry, I'm probably going to teach it in three months again. Then there's that one early November in Boston and virtual is an option and you can get a ton of continuing education credits with that.
Speaker 1:Wow, it was so funny how you described the perfect need for it. And then, in three words, he was like yes, I just made it, no big deal. He's just like, yes, I just did it. Okay, what can somebody expect On that day of the 27th? Is it virtual online courses all taught by you, other experts? What can somebody expect?
Speaker 2:It's just me. It's seven hours of me, so brace yourself, it's seven hours of me, I haven't broken up. And it's a synchronous In mental health and the acquiring of credits. We have virtual that can be recorded, that we can use towards our licensure, meeting our licensure requirements. Then there's also we have to take a certain amount of in-person that virtual, but being live and in-person counts towards those particular hours. Right now, with this provider that I'm using, ali. They're NBCC. They offer those types of programs. It's going to be live, virtual, synchronous, live, no recording. Then I'm excited because yesterday I met with a huge provider of continuing education credits. If you're a therapist, these guys are always in your inbox telling you about CEUs. They're always at a great price and they have just a fantastic reach, not just in this country but other countries. They're a huge supplier and I'm going to be doing one with them. Probably it'll be up in six months. They said Then that one will be recorded and you can access it anytime you want.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing. What an awesome research resource. Somebody like me could not take this course. I'm not in the medical world doing what you do. This would not be for front-line people like myself that are just like nutrition coaches, trainers, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, well, I don't think there's nobody's going to gatekeep you. You're welcome to take it. It's just very specific. There's going to be a whole section about doing counseling and using your orientation and documentation and how to be part of a treatment team. That may or may not apply to you, but there is going to be a great review of the research literature thus far. What's the evidence base for this? Where do we still need to go? What about eating disorders? Because that's a big one. There's a bit about the science, because again, I want to flesh out that bio part of our bio-psycho-social model around this. But yeah, anybody, I think, can take it. They're not asking for your license number in order to register. I don't believe. Okay, lord knows, I've taken plenty of continuing education credits that are for doctors and other things that I didn't get credit for it, for my license, but I still like to learn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love that. Okay, it sounds like it's a little bit out of my scope. I am a personal trainer, which means I am a therapist a really inexpensive therapist, most of the time like a hairdresser or something, but it sounds absolutely wonderful that you're putting this on. It sounds even better that you'll have other opportunities to continue to do this and continue to get this message out there. Yeah, I've asked you this question before. I want to ask it one more time. You mentioned a lot of those evidence-based techniques EMDR, the color theory, all the things that you are trained to do as a counselor. I know standalone. Those things are effective, but what is the difference between doing those therapies with changing the diet and without changing the diet?
Speaker 2:So I see them working better with less effort. After somebody's brain is working better, even if it's just a little bit better, they are better able to engage with the therapeutic process. They're better able to utilize the tools. It's less overwhelming to pull out a worksheet and start filling out a DBT worksheet. With a slightly better working brain, it is easier to practice mindfulness techniques with just even a little bit better functioning brain.
Speaker 2:And when you do a ketogenic diet, there's a lot of people who come to me for psychological issues. We do a ketogenic diet and they're like I'm good, it's been great, nicole, but I don't need you. Now they go off and they leave. That's great. I'm like be careful. I have had.
Speaker 2:One of the things about them saying that this diet is unsustainable is that sometimes people will have benefit and then they will accidentally fall off or they just won't understand the implications of having a treat. They can go into mania, for example, or they can get a relapse of their symptoms. It can be nice to have someone in the wings to help them get back on track. Help them deal with any shame from anything that happened. Of that I always say don't be a stranger. Then social situations too, as you do this long term? What does this mean for relationships that you have completely transformed and you're part of a system and how is your system handling that and what's happening? Not all systems handle change. Not all systems are okay with that. There's things that go on. Yes, I'm glad they feel better and I hope they reach out if they need any help with that sort of thing or want to further optimize with lifestyle change. You're probably the same way with your practice. What you do. It's just easier For the ones that stay that are like now I feel ready, better able to approach trauma. I feel better able to do EMDR and desensitize some of those things that still trigger, maybe because I really like feeling good and I really want to feel good. I just find that the effect size of the change I see is much better on a ketogenic diet, without the ketogenic diet.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I will work in session to help someone cognitively restructure a negative thought that is causing them distress. At the end of the session they're like oh yeah, I feel a lot better. That's good. I believe that new thought. I have a different emotion with that, but they come back and they come back with the same thought that we just restructured. It's almost like there's a stickiness, like a rigidity. It makes sense because your neurochemical environment helps prime you for what memories and thoughts you're going to have. Your brain chemistry is often. You just go back down into this soup, this neurochemical soup. You're going to start picking up those same things again because they're associational not just associational but, I think, chemical.
Speaker 2:We talk about people are. My wife's angry at me. All she can do is think about all the things I've done wrong and she can't remember all the good times and vice versa. When you're mad, all you can think about is that same thing. It's you access those memories and you can't think about the good stuff. And it's kind of the same thing. We need that working for CBT. I think they learn better. I think the exposure therapy works better. Habituation works better. That's a component to exposure response prevention therapy. I just think they get a lot farther in their therapy when they have a slightly better working brain.
Speaker 1:Great answer. I can certainly empathize with somebody who's like oh, I don't have mental problems anymore. I remember that I used to, but now I can go back to eating some of the stuff I was eating before. Last time I cheated on the carnivore diet. I had a bunch of sugar and couldn't stop myself. My anxiety came back and I realized how bad that sucked. It's good motivator, Just take back on. I can certainly understand that Before we let you go, you are going to check out a movie tonight, Do you mind?
Speaker 1:telling the audience about this movie. It sounds really good.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm excited it's called Common Ground.
Speaker 2:It is about regenerative agriculture. I only heard about it because Jan Bazuki was talking about it on LinkedIn. I think it is amazing. I know you have a lot of carnivore people who listen to you. They have special showing. You can get tickets. It's showing in all the big places. Let's see. Seattle has already happened. Portland is happening tonight, but then Ithaca, new York, october 1,. Austin, texas, october 4,. Asheville, north Carolina, october 6. Bellingham, washington, has quite a few in October. Arlington, massachusetts I don't think I don't see any at yours, but I bet you could get them to show it around you, casey, if you asked. It's going to be amazing.
Speaker 2:I think it is really important In the interest of helping people keep access to bioavailable, nutrient-dense foods. I think that this information coming out is really important because I think it's in danger. I think that a narrative about eating meat is dangerous or it's terrible, or shaming people, that it's terrible for the planet, they can't put their own mental health first to eat and take care of themselves, that they need to sacrifice themselves for this idea that this is destroying the planet, when there's all the research in the world saying that is not the case. I think that's awful. I'd love to see this movie do well.
Speaker 1:Amazing yeah, me too For every game-changers. And what the health and all these ridiculous documentaries that come out? We need the counter story to that. The more that message can get out, the better. Wow, I've had such a wonderful conversation. I hope you enjoyed the movie tonight. Nicole Laurent, where do you want people to go to find you and connect with you in your work?
Speaker 2:MentalHealthKetocom has a contact form for me. You can also just email me, nicole at mentalhealthketocom, that is the easiest way. I'm on Twitter. I'm on LinkedIn. Like you said, I haven't been posting very much, but that should get better eventually Then, yeah, awesome, you can find me In the introduction I gave your Instagram, but you are more active on Twitter, right, I tend to see you Right now? Yeah, right now, I am for sure.
Speaker 1:Okay, great. Well, I will link all of that in the show notes. I got my calendar out. When's the next time we're going to do this? Give me a day and time Right now. Put your right on the phone. No, I'm just kidding. We'd love to have you back anytime that you would like. We'll absolutely stay in touch. I would love to talk to you after you get a few of these done and have trained a bunch of people to kind of see how it's going. I'm sure we'll have lots of other interesting things to talk about. For now, just thank you so very much for your work. You do such lovely work. You explain things really well. You can explain the science, but you can also make it very simple for people, and your ability to also make it practical is wonderful. The story about the 17-year-old is just heartwarming. I absolutely love that. So thank you, nicole, so very much for taking the time to come on a show today. We really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Thanks for watching this episode of Boundless Body Radio. As always, thank you so very much for listening to Boundless Body Radio. I know I say this all the time, but I really do mean it. It has been such a joy to make and produce this podcast and to watch it grow. Our business started in the pandemic in July of 2020, and we started the podcast in October of 2020. So it has been three years now and to see that we have generated over 400,000 downloads worldwide is just simply unbelievable to me, this year in particular has been such a blast to travel to different health conferences and not only meet some of our amazing guests, but also to meet many of you, our listeners and supporters. We really just can't thank you enough. As always, feel free to book a complimentary 30 minute session on our website, which is myboundlessbodycom. On our homepage, there is a book now button where you can find a time to speak with us about health, fitness, nutrition, whatever you like.
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