1088: You Can’t Hack Your System, The Body is Way Too Smart With Ian Clark

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1088: You Can’t Hack Your System, The Body is Way Too Smart With Ian Clark
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I’ve had Ian Clark on the podcast a few times before, but I always learn so much from our conversations. He’s spent decades researching health, experimenting on himself, and learning from the results. I always appreciate his willingness to question conventional wisdom and change his mind when new information comes along.

We dive into some of the biggest environmental stressors we’re exposed to every day, from air pollution and household chemicals to microplastics, synthetic fabrics, and artificial lighting. We also talk about why supporting the body’s natural detox pathways may be more helpful than aggressive detox protocols and some simple ways to create a healthier environment at home.

Ian and I also get into nutrition and Ian shares his perspective on advanced glycation end products (AGEs). Plus how simplifying nutrition and paying attention to your individual response matters more than following a rigid diet. We talk about minerals, including iodine and selenium. And then there’s the nervous system, stress, and why women are different from men when it comes to this.

We covered a variety of topics in this episode that I’m sure will spark curiosity!

Episode Highlights With Ian

  • Understanding detox and why harsh ones can be too much for the body
  • The things you don’t know that you’re breathing in and how to avoid accumulating it
  • How to avoid becoming an aggregator of air toxins
  • All of us have been poisoned in some way in the modern world 
  • Can we have perfect health? And what’s the alternative
  • Why indoor air is more polluted that outdoor air and what to do about it
  • The sneaky microplastics in most clothing these days 
  • A great reason to open your windows every day
  • Why to air dry your microfiber cloths in the home
  • What advanced glycation byproducts do to the body and how to avoid them (pressure cookers don’t produce them!)
  • How to reverse the damage of AGEs and slow aging 
  • Brazil nuts aren’t the right form of selenium
  • You can’t hack your system, the body is way too smart, and what to optimize instead
  • Consistency over intensity for long-term change

Resources Mentioned

More From Wellness Mama

Read Transcript

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Katie: Ian Clark, welcome back. Thanks for being here again.

Ian: Yeah, thank you for being here, Katie. This is gonna be fun.

Katie: I agree. We’ve gotten to have– I think we met at various health conferences over the years. We’ve always gotten to have fun late night conversations about new modalities and things that both of us are kind of researching at the moment, and I feel like I always learn something fascinating from you.

You always have a take, on something that is different than the mainstream, and I always love to hear what you’re experimenting with and what’s new for you. So I’d love to kind of jump around a little bit in this conversation and cover some of the topics I know you have a ton of expertise on. Including things like detox, minerals, and then, later on I wanna even touch on things that we’ve both changed our mind on over the years, ’cause I think that’s also a mark of intelligence to, like, adapt as new information becomes available.

To start though, it seems like detox is a big buzzword. I’m seeing lots of people doing various, quote-unquote, “detoxes” on social media. I have my concerns with some of them because my stance is that the body knows how to detox and if we work with its natural pathways, it does it brilliantly. And if we try to do a thing to the body, it can cause some downstream problems.

Though I’m certainly welcome to being challenged on that idea. But I know that you deal a lot with, toxins and avoiding them and also detox and how to support the body. So I know that’s a broad topic. I would love to jump in there though and hear, your stance kind of on what are the most prominent toxins in our environment that many of us are exposed to, and then secondarily, how do we support the body in detoxing those things?

Ian: And I like your approach. It’s called support, not force. And I think the w- the term gentle needs to go with the word detox. So that you don’t get into Herxheimers and healing crises and downtime, which we’ve all been through that. I think a lot of us have experienced some harsh detoxes that were probably not the best to do at the time, but it was the best that we knew.

And I think, yeah, detox has trended hard. People talk about killing parasites and removing heavy metals and chelation and EDTA and all these really intense things. Where what I think you and I have both learned along the way is that when you create a, a good healthy environment, a lot of this stuff will leave because it’s just not wanting to be there anymore.

And we all know that we’re breathing 11,000 liters of air per day, which is high volume, and we pump 7,200 liters of blood. So our body is so efficient at bringing everything in, and the air is filled with what is now known as PM 2.5. That’s particulate matter 2.5. Just a scientific term for something that’s invisible to your eyes.

You can’t smell it or taste it, but it’s in a very high volume in the air. You know, things like tire dust, brake dust, cremated bodies in neighborhoods. I mean, that’s a really gross one, but that’s really what’s going on. And so whatever you breathe in, you don’t want to accumulate. You want to bring it out as quicker, quicker than it’s coming in, because otherwise you become an aggregator, an accumulator of things that will congest you and poison you.

Now, all of us have been poisoned. I was significantly poisoned by working in the oil and gas industry in the field on the rigs for 17 years when I was young. And I didn’t know that I was being poisoned. Nobody told us about that. And that showed up in my 40s, almost killed me. And so I just had to learn, “Oh, wow, I didn’t know certain things.”

And I had to learn, just like you’ve had to learn. And you’ve been sharing so much knowledge and wisdom over the years as you’ve accumulated the knowledge. And the more you share, the more your audience will share back with you. The same with me. You know, we’re all sharing with each other. We’re here to open source things so that we can all have a, a higher body intelligence and really be on the track to perfect health, ’cause that’s the goal, perfect health.

And people say, “Well, you can’t have perfect health.” M- well, w- what’s the option? Partial health? You know, ’cause perfect is complete, and that’s our goal. So when you’re on that track, you’re head- heading that way. So here you and I and, and the people in this space who are doing the deep level research are here to share those things that can empower and support everyone to enjoy perfect health as much as is humanly possible for ourselves and our families.

Katie: Yeah. So many important points there, and I would guess a lot of people have never thought about, like, the byproducts of cremation actually are in the air in many places, or some of these ones that you mentioned are lesser known. I know from the stats, and this continues to actually, I think, get worse last I saw, indoor air in general can often be more polluted than outdoor air.

And I’m a huge fan of being in nature as much as possible anyway. I think the benefits of that are exponential and compounding and far beyond what we can quantify in a lab. So I know that part of this is like we can exit the human cage of spending 98% of our time indoors and try to spend more time in direct, interaction with the Earth.

I think that’s a huge factor for health, and I talk on here about nature deficit disorder and how if we don’t get, for instance, sunlight cues and time in nature and fresh air and contact with the ground, like, those are things the body’s meant to have as variables within our health equation. But on the, the topic of indoor air, I feel like especially for many of the moms listening, a lot of our listeners are moms, this is something that we actually have a lot of ability to affect change in when we understand it, and it doesn’t have to be overwhelming or scary.

There are probably some big needle movers that make a tremendous difference within our home air environment. So can you speak to that and, like, what to be aware of in our homes that might be contributing to poor air quality and what we can do about it?

Ian: Yeah, the, well, the biggest thing is, like, having an eco-friendly environment.

There’s a lot of VOCs and things and off-gassing from carpets, and the wrong kind of paint and the wrong kind of finishes, the wrong kind of glues. You know, kitchens are another place where you can have a lot of toxicity from countertops. So just doing the research and finding out what is eco-friendly within the house.

Make sure that there’s no weird chemicals being used in dishwasher detergent or dish soap and laundry soap. And then clothing is another huge one because polyester is always off-gassing microplastics either into your skin or in your breath or in the house. And it’s insidious because, you know, the polyester wear clothing has trended so hard because they talk about it being breathable.

They don’t talk about the fact that you’re gonna get microplastics and poisons going into your body through that. So really going to organic cotton or linen or wool, things like that, in the interior of the house. And also being aware of what’s coming from the outside in on the shoes and having, you know, shoes left at the door, and not just trodding stuff through the house. And being aware of cats and dogs.

You know, we have cats and dogs. We’re just aware of them, that there’s toxic plasmosis. There’s all this weird stuff that can happen with a pet, but you wanna keep everybody nice and clean and healthy and fresh so that there is no contamination and cross-pollination of all this stuff, all the stuff you don’t want within your house.

And air fresheners, like, wow. Air fresheners in a car or a house, they better be essential oils, and they better be high quality because otherwise they can really contaminate the atmosphere. And then just dust. Dust mites and having the, having the air circulating and, like you said, as much fresh air as you can have.

And watching out for drying clothing or drying, you know, like these microfiber cloths. Never, never dry a microfiber cloth in the dryer. Hang them out to dry. Microfiber’s okay, but hang it out to dry. Don’t ever put it in the dryer because you’re gonna be flooding your house with microplastics. And so I think it comes back to real common sense stuff. And, you know, getting the right lighting in the house, having the, having the atmosphere set for comfort in the evenings, clearing out harsh blue lights.

And that kind of thing, I think is, you know, just the, the common sense standards.

Katie: Yeah, I feel like within that, two categories that I’m excited that I’m seeing more talked about on the internet are the clothing piece and the lighting piece, because I feel like those were not… Like, for a long time we were very focused on the food conversation, which I also want to have, and which is of course very important.

And I feel like you can’t out eat a poor environment or a high stress load or poor sleep. Like, there’s some variables that are actually able to move the needle in a negative direction, even if you’re, quote-unquote, “eating the perfect diet.” And I feel like we’re seeing more about natural fibers, and there’s certainly more options available than there used to be.

I’ve been in that process as well, kind of switching out my wardrobe slowly into just very small capsule wardrobe of natural fiber clothing. Which especially living in Florida in the summer is actually a benefit of those are more breathable as well. But to your point, I see people at my wellness center all the time get in the sauna wearing these workout clothes or polyester clothing, and tr- try to mention to them like, you’re…

When you’re sweating especially and your pores are open and you’re in heat, you are creating a perfect environment to absorb directly microplastics from the clothing. So we now even have natural fiber alternatives people can purchase where we are just because, a lot of people don’t realize that that low level exposure from your clothing can actually be really significant.

Especially if you’re already working through something else and your body’s got an extra load there. And then I’m so glad you touched on the lighting. This has been one that has been so impactful for me personally, I would guess for you as well. Just really trying to mimic nature as much as possible, which I think is the key in many areas.

Mimic what nature already does perfectly. If I’m not gonna live outside, how can I create a more natural lighting environment within my home so that at sunset there’s no bright lights, there’s no overhead lights, there’s no screens, there’s no blue light, and it’s low light, reddish hue bulbs. And I’ve now automated that, so timers turn those things on at sunset, turn them off at bedtime.

And I notice even my kids relax more easily in the evening with natural lighting because that’s what our body is meant to respond to. So before we move into solutions and minerals, I do want to touch on the food conversation with the caveat that I don’t think this is the only or even the most important factor.

However, it is a significant one, and we know that there are problems certainly with the standard diet. But I would guess there’s some pitfalls even people who think they’re being really health conscious might still fall into. And I know you and I have had an evolving food conversation over all the years w- as you learn new things and I learn new things.

So kind of what’s the current state of that for you, and what do you feel like are some of the big pitfalls people might still miss even if they’re trying to be healthy?

Ian: Well, I think it’s really coming down to, how the food is prepared. You know, the– of course, it’s important to have clean food, and I, I lean towards more proteins and fats, and my glyconutrition is very specific.

I, I don’t really go to carbs in the food category unless it is very specific things. But if you are frying your food and baking it and getting that crispy, really delicious, you know, kind of dopamine-releasing flavors with your food. Barbecuing or air frying or frying or baking or roasting, we’ve learned that that creates in the food advanced glycation end products.

And sounds like a technical term because it is. It was discovered very long time ago. We’re talking going back to the 1930s, 1940s, and ’50s. By 1985, the research was thoroughly in on how much damage the advanced glycation end products do to the human body when you consume it, and it’s called cross-linking.

So the, the sugars combined with the fats and the proteins create like a plasticizing kind of thing. It’s like glue. And you can measure your body how cross-linked you are, and it slowly contaminates your entire system to turn you almost like into a mannequin. And y- you see people as they get older, they get more stiff and sore, and they get more congested, and they’re, they’re having more struggles with health problems because of the advanced glycation end products.

So getting those out of the food is very, actually very simple. You know, if you learn how to use a pressure cooker and be skilled with that, that doesn’t produce glycation end products. And you can, you know, do other things other than frying. Go more towards the, the beautiful aroma and flavor of things in this whole form rather than that crunchy glycation, even though that’s what drives all the, the, culinary…

It’s interesting how the thing that drives the culinary and the aromas you get as you go down the street in the, in the summertime, in the evening and all these amazing restaurants are there, and it makes your mouth water just smelling what’s coming out of the, the chimneys. That’s the stuff that actually binds your body up and causes rapid aging and a lot of diseases tied into that.

You know, the Maillard effect. So I think paying attention to that, doing a bit of your own research on it, finding out what AGEs are, A-G-E-S, the advanced glycation end products, and just educating yourself on this stuff. You know, don’t take my word for it. It’s always important that you get tapped into research yourself, all of you, just like we do.

And then you know that you know that you know. You’re not just sort of relying on somebody to tell you. You’re literally able to tell yourself the things that are the most important and the truths that get you enthusiastic about, about upgrading yourself and taking consideration. And like you said, Katie, the iterations of all the diets.

I s- you know, when I first ran into the health space and I was, you know, dying and I was scrambling just to survive, I ran into the raw food vegans. And that was actually a lot of fun because they’re, you know, kinda hippy trippy and, raw- all raw food, nothing cooked and, and no meat and all that stuff.

And you’d get into juicing and all these fancy things made with nuts and, you know, what it was like. And so it was fun. That was about four and a half years. But I noticed that my body was depleting in certain things. And, you know, it may work for people really well. I’m not against it at all. But, you know, you just learn over the years what works for you.

You know, the best diet for you is the one that works the best for you, where your body keeps tuning in, you feel better, you’re better cognitive, better health, you’re measuring better. And you know, I think, your body better than anyone else, and you can read your body, and that’s the beautiful thing about being set free.

You don’t have the food police looking over your shoulder, “Oh, what are you eating now?” And, “You shouldn’t be having that.” Says, says who? You know, obviously, we’re gonna stay away from GMOs and non-organic and pesticides and herbicides and all the sprayed garbage, and the packaged foods and the the rancid seed oils and all that stuff or…

That’s just common sense stuff. But, you know, getting into becoming more sophisticated with your food and simplifying it, and then making sure that you’re covering all the bases, and that your body is being fueled in such a way that your brain comes online 100%. You know, we’re told that we get 10% use of our brain when we’re in school.

“Oh, yeah. By the way, did you know that the human race only uses 10% of its brain?” Okay, that’s because it’s not fueled 100%. When you fuel your brain 100%, your brain comes online 100%. You, you are already hyper-intelligent. Now you can access that intelligence better than ever. And every cell in your body, it has a brain called the cell membrane.

And it has to have a brain because the brain up in your head is sending out communication to every cell in your body 24 hours a day. Every microsecond, there are billions of, of bits of information that your brain is sending out asking a question, “How are you doing? What’s happening?” Every cell in your body sends a signal back.

That’s how your body knows what to do. You know, your immune system lives in your blood. Every organ needs support in the command central up here. If it’s compromised, it can’t give the proper instructions. It can’t send out clean signals and receive. So you wanna have your, your brain and every cell in your body hyper-intelligent, in full communication.

And there are ways to do that. Thankfully, we know how to do this, and most people don’t. But we’re here to share it, and then as soon as you know what it is and you employ these elements and these nutrients in the proper way, then you find out what it is for you. ‘Cause that’s the only way I’ve ever learned, and Katie, I think you could say the same.

We both learn by doing, and then we’re taught by the results of what happens.

Katie: Exactly. And I love your, reminder to question everything. I say that on here and I say that to my kids often. Question everything, even and especially me, because that was a lesson I l- I feel like I learned slowly. Like you, I turned to the health world when I wasn’t getting answers from conventional medicine, and experimented with a lot of things and tried many people’s protocols exactly like they prescribed them.

I had spreadsheets of supplements. I was tracking everything. And what I learned over time was that obviously each body is so different, and what I actually needed was to tune into my own and develop much more direct communication with my own body, and take inspiration certainly from many people and their protocols and learn.

But at the end of the day, I needed to personalize it to my body and what my body was asking for, not what some spreadsheet PDF prescribed. And that’s when I really started noticing a change. So I love that you talked about that as well as membrane support I feel like doesn’t get enough talk as far as how important this is.

Like, so much in our body relies on the health of our membranes, and that’s not a topic that we even often hear about. So I’m excited to hear a little bit more about, like, you talked about the rapid aging that comes from these AGEs, which it’s funny that the name is even age. And I’m curious if someone has developed a lot of this in their body over time from eating what they thought were healthy foods that are maybe cooked in a way that is not ideal, is there a way to sort of, like, undo the damage. And/or, like, to your point about these things can be reversed and you can learn how to eat in a way that is complementary to what your body needs. How does a person actually begin to do that?

Ian: And that’s the, the billion-dollar question. So in the medical world, once they discovered the advanced glycation end product issue, they told everyone, “Well, it’s not reversible. There’s really nothing you can do about it,” which removed hope. So I found out that there’s a bunch of things you can do to completely stop it, number one, and then reverse it, number two.

So you don’t wanna keep adding it in. You know, if you’re gonna willfully continue eat- eating things that are glycated, well, that- that’s okay. It’s your, your decision. Nobody’s telling you what to do, and we’re not gonna look down our nose at you if you do that. That’s your business. That’s what I love about the health space is people can do what they want to do. We’re just here to support whatever we can.

And we are, we are also requiring magnesium to keep us softened because, hypertension comes into your cardiovascular system in the muscle walls of your 10,500 kilometers of ar- arteries, veins, and capillaries that they get hardened over your lifetime if you don’t have the right amount of magnesium in your tissue.

Now, the way to get it in is through your skin, and I think a lot of you are familiar with putting magnesium in through your skin, and that allows the body to go and, and begin to break up those cross-linking. So just think about, you know, something that’s, that’s linked, and you can break that link. We have a, a little thing called the activator that you can stimulate through percussion and vibration by slapping the skin with it, and I’ve done testing on it.

I, I m- moved my body 14 years younger in one area where I tested it with a special device that tells you how cross-linked you are. And within two days of doing the treatment, I was 14 years younger in that part of my body. So these are things that you can do that are measurable, and you wanna have a nice fluid body.

And the one thing I was gonna mention, Katie, I’ve learned so much in the last 22 years from women in the health space, way more than men. The reason for that is because women’s bodies are infinitely more intelligent than a male body. Not trying to put a male body down, I’m just saying that a woman’s body can produce a baby.

Well, okay, that’s like another world. A woman’s body goes through hormonal changes every day throughout your whole life. A male body cannot produce a human body inside of it, and our hormones are pretty stable throughout our life. So the sophistication level or the finely tuning of a female body allows a woman to be way, way more aware of the things that are affecting negatively or positively.

Whereas us guys don’t feel a lot of that stuff, you know? And it takes a while for our body to catch on. So having the, the sensitivity and the awareness of, “Okay, this is the reaction that happens if you do this. This is how to counteract it. This is how to fix the problem,” is all combining and sharing the knowledge and the wisdom around these things, with each other.

So men and women are so very dynamically different, as we all know. And women do not thrive on stress. Men thrive on stress. Having your autonomic nervous system perfectly tapped in so you can do your tasks during the day in sympathetic and then transfer into parasympathetic nice and gently and back and forth. So you don’t get pinned on sympathetic where it becomes stressful, allows everything to work so much better.

And that tension, you know, the… People call it, “I need to have you at attention.” Well, at tension. No, I want you in a relaxed state where you’re able to think clearly and receive information, where your body can restore and regenerate itself. And you want to remove the tension of the advanced glycation end products.

You want to make sure that you’re not contributing to getting in the wrong s- part of the chart when it comes to your autonomic nervous system. And you’re able to handle situations that come your way with much, much greater ease than if you’re stressed out and then you get more stressed out. So I think it, it all comes down to, you know, getting deeper rest, obviously.

If you’re, if you don’t have… you’re not all bound up and tense, you’re gonna have much better quality sleep. You’re gonna digest your food better. You’re gonna have to eat less. You don’t have to eat so much food. And there’s, there’s ways of learning how to increase the things that your body really needs, like how do you get more D glucose?

It’s not by eating more food, and that’s a whole nother topic that we’ll get into another time. I’m just dr- dropping a little hint there. And making sure we’re balanced with our proteins and our fats and our glyconutrients, ’cause we gotta have those. And being comfortable in our bodies.

Katie: Oh, so many good things to unpack in that as well.

And I love that you brought up the nervous system because I’ve enjoyed recently learning more about, to your point, the differences in the male and female nervous system and how men can respond so differently to like intense physical labor, to challenge, to even stress. Whereas a woman in the exact same situation, her body would interpret much more of a load from that potentially.

And also to your point, I had, a another podcast guest point out that we’ve kind of developed this misconception of the nervous system that we’re just supposed to be like calm and regulated all the time. But actually a regulated nervous system is one that appropriately responds to whatever’s going on and is able to then appropriately downshift back into parasympathetic after that.

And the problem is most people have kind of lost the downshift. We’re kind of stuck, like you said, in that sympathetic dominant state, which, I know firsthand if your nervous system is not online, it does not matter what you do to your body, it is not going to optimally thrive to heal. Like all of those functions depend on our body or our nervous system’s ability to downshift into that parasympathetic state.

And I’d love to dive a little deeper on minerals ’cause this is a huge topic for me and I have done so much experimentation with this recently. As well as you mentioned the activator. I’m gonna link to that in the show notes. I’m curious just on a personal level, ’cause I’ve used this as well, I know there’s certain spots you recommend starting with and that you mentioned your body was significantly younger in that area after.

Does this mean that over time it would be wise for a person to kind of rotate where they’re using the activator around their whole body to like thoroughly address the whole body? Or is there a system to that?

Ian: Yeah, there’s, there’s a very significant, protocol around it, which is actually very simple.

And the first place you start is in the most problematic areas. Now, if you don’t have any joint injuries or joint pain, then you start with your meridians. If you have joint pain or, say, a really bad shoulder, hip, or knee, you do the meridians and the joint. But the reason that you wanna get the meridians done first is to open up the organ function.

So the inside of the elbows on, on both arms is heart and lungs, liver, gallbladder, spleen, and large intestine. And then the back of the knees is kidneys and pancreas. So when you stimulate those areas, you’re literally communicating through a very high intelligent network that goes from this part of the body that was tracked under Chinese medicine.

For example, your right elbow on the inside is to your liver. I’ve had people do a treatment on their, on their elbow and get a big black mark on the side of their torso where their liver is 30 minutes later that lasted half an hour. It’s th- And they never touched that part of their body. So these connections are, are clearly there.

Say, if somebody was having a heart attack, immediately, without even having the little tool, you can use your hand. Start to significantly slap the inside of the elbow, and that will draw the energy right to… It’ll go to the heart, draw the energy away from the heart that is seizing it up. And people have come right out of heart attacks just by slapping the inside of the, the left elbow So this is something that when you do it correctly, it’s done.

You don’t have to go back and keep doing it. And yes, you do work your entire body. I think the, the next stop is joints, you know, knees. Knees are the ones that get so much use, and they bend and they… You gotta stand up with them. You gotta run and walk and go upstairs and do all this stuff. And so getting your knees all cleaned out is essential, and then hips, shoulders, elbows, ankles, anything that moves, right?

And then your neck and traps. Once you have all that done and you can’t get any more junk out of there and all the pain’s gone, then you work all the rest of it. You just work every square inch of your body eventually. And it takes time. There’s no rush. It might take a few years to finally get through it all.

But when you get, first get going, it’s the psychological barrier to entry of the treatments feel painful, but they’re, they don’t cause pain, they release it. The treatments are, like, very different. You think, “Am I gonna do what?” When I first heard about it, I was like, “What? I’m gonna do what?” And then when I did it, it worked.

I was so amazed that I was so glad that I had promised myself that if I was shown something, I would do it, ’cause otherwise I would have never known. I would’ve just seen it and went, “I don’t think so,” and then moved on. But because of the effect I’ve seen with it over and over again with everyone, I let people know, even though it’s not popular to let people know about that one.

It’s still very, very important. And to me, it’s one of the top level healing modalities in the world that you can do for yourself. And once you have the knowledge, there’s no cost involved. Just go ahead and do it, other than you gotta spend some courage points.

Katie: For sure. And I’ll just say from firsthand experience, it does get easier over time.

And I will admit too, like when I first did it, I got these big purple marks on especially like my inner elbows. And I didn’t believe you at first that that doesn’t continue to happen once the stagnation is kind of removed. ’cause I’m like, “Well, I’m hitting the body. Isn’t it gonna bruise every time?”

And it definitely now when I do it, especially elbow area, they get lightly pink while I’m doing it, and then within a few minutes it’s totally back to normal. So I was surprised to see how dramatic that shift was, once I had done it enough times. And so that’s, that was really fascinating. I also want to circle back to the minerals piece for a minute, especially when it comes to iodine and why iodine is so important.

And also I know iodine has kind of gotten, some controversy in recent years, especially related to the thyroid. So I would love to kind of tackle what are some of the biggest misconceptions around iodine and how do we best use it as a tool?

Ian: Yeah, iodine is certainly a, a crucially important element for all of us.

And people get very distracted about the thyroid, thinking that i- they, they hear iodine, you hear cut, cut infections and thyroid. So that’s the way that people can have a fear factor to stay away from it. It’s sort of like the unknown. “Oh, well, you know, it might not be good for you.” Meanwhile, the, the amount of research was done in the medical world on iodine as well as the naturopath world is extensive.

Probably one of the most researched elements out there. So I had to learn and I had to understand what was going on. And it started out back in 2008 with a thing called Atomidine. And it was so over strong that when the guy in our lab accidentally spilled some on his arm, he immediately washed it off knowing that he was not to do that, and within two weeks he had alopecia.

So I just stopped the whole thing. I was like, “Okay, I don’t know enough about this to be safe. This is not happening.” Fast-forward from 2008 to 2019, I started learning about a technology where you can take crystal iodine, which is called USP grade I-2 molecular iodine, comes in these little tiny little pearl, like a little ball, and we have the technology that converts that into a gas molecule. And we are able to infuse that into water at 300 parts per million.

Well, what that means is, is that it’s extremely safe. You can’t hurt yourself with it, and it’s low dose, but it has an extremely high volume. So when you put it in your mouth and swish it around for a minute, it goes directly into your bloodstream as molecular iodine. It also neutralizes all those bacteria that cause tooth decay.

That’s an interesting one. And then you just swallow it. As soon as it goes down in your stomach, and you just wash it down with a bit of water, as soon as it hits your stomach, it immediately turns into iodide. So it has a chemical reaction in your tummy. And when it turns into iodide, then it picks up in your bloodstream, and that’s what feeds your thyroid. Problem with thyroids is the receptor sites get plugged up.

So you have to clean the receptor sites up. What does… What plugs it up? Chlorine, fluoride, bromide, things that are, you know, halogens. They, they literally occupy the space your thyroid would otherwise be fueled in. If you have enough of that there, your, your body will freak out. It’ll either overreact and cause a hyperthyroidism or, or kind of go dormant and go hypothyroidism.

Either one are very not good for you. And the thing that helps you is the iodine in its pure form cleaning the receptor sites up, along with another thing called Solaris. And then now they’re open, now your, now your thyroid can receive the iodide. The iodide is what fuels the thyroid to produce T3, T4 iodine hormones, ’cause your thyroid literally produces iodine from the iodide.

It’s like this dance back and forth. So it’s the best of both worlds. If you only take iodide and don’t enjoy the molecular iodine, every cell in your body is looking for molecular iodine. And then the iodide goes and not only deals with thyroid, but many other glands. So your endocrine system is now being fueled properly.

What does that mean to you? It means that you’re gonna have a, a better metabolism, a more balanced metabolism. It’s gonna support your g- good gut health. It helps with your reproductive organs, male or female. It also improves cognitive ability because all these things are tied into IQ, intelligent quotient.

And you can also take the molecular iodine and put it topically. It immediately goes into the body through the skin, spec- s- specifically in the genital area for both male and female, because the spongy skin in those, in the genitals absorbs things really quickly. And it goes in and supports testosterone production for a man, helps to keep the hygiene for a woman and everything nice and healthy in, in the genital area.

So it’s just one of those things that when, when we started learning more aspects of it and how it really works, it’s one of those things that we just want the whole world to know about. And to have it in the right form, ’cause it’s safe, and it’s so easy. Just like literally one capful every morning. I swish it.

Now, the one very important thing, and this took me a while to learn, I just wasn’t told for some reason. Two years into the whole iodine project, I found out that selenomethionine, like a type of selenium that you can get it from companies like Thorne and, you can look it up online. It is essential, number one, to have selenium supplementation during the day because there’s not enough in the food.

And even the stuff that is in the food is not awesome. Like Brazil nuts is not the right kind of selenium. You wanna have a very specific form, and it’s really only 400 micrograms a day. It’s not that you’re gonna take a lot, but every day your body needs it. And if you take the iodine without it, it, it imbalances you because you’re…

It goes hand in glove with iodine. So you wanna– You know, that’s another thing. If people are just doing iodide and they’re doing these different things, it, it can throw them off. And you just wanna have your body in equilibrium so that everything’s functioning the way it’s supposed to. And then you, again, this is accessing your body intelligence.

Katie: So then for anyone who’s had maybe a negative reaction to taking some form of iodine in the past, if I’m understanding, that’s likely related to either the dose or the type, not that their body doesn’t need iodine.

And I appreciate you mentioning selenium as well, because I’ve noticed in nature when there’s iodine, there’s also selenium. So that to me indicates that those two need each other. And to your point, those are both very depleted in the modern food supply as well. you mentioned Solaris. Can you elaborate on what that is and what it does?

Yeah, well, Solaris is something that showed up in 2016. It had been around for quite a while before that, but it was very privately known, and it was only being prescribed by, by naturopath doctors at the time. So when I heard about it, I, I was told, “Well, th- it’s an emulsion of clove, rosemary, and thyme, and it’s this ancient Ayurvedic blend.

It’s a huge discovery,” or a rediscovery, I guess you could call it And it just does a whole litany of things. Like the list was way too long. And when I first… Like, this guy’s telling me about it. He wasn’t even selling it to me. He was just telling me his experience by letting people know about it and how it fixes all this stuff.

And I said… His name is Mike, and I said, “Mike, you know, it sounds too good to be true, but if it was even half true, it’s exciting. So how do I get it?” And so he connected me with the people where to get it, and I got some. And then I started buying a lot of it and just sharing it. I did that between 2016 and 2020.

And I actually saw the performance of this thing doing what, what I was told it would do, and there was nothing on the list that it didn’t do. So that was a little shocking. And I was wondering, like, “Why? W- why is it so potent? What is in this stuff?” And it’s just the combination. It’s not an essential oil.

People think, “Well, I’m just gonna take clove oil and rosemary oil and thyme oil and blend them together,” and it’s not that. It’s the entire essence of all three plants, all the medicinals, all the plant esters extracted in an emulsion. So when you put it in water, it dis- disappears. You put it on your skin, it immediately goes in.

If you put it on your toothbrush and brush your teeth, it foams up. And people have had outstanding results with dental just on using it in their mouth for dental. And like literally people who have had periodontal issues, all, you know, within literally weeks or in some really bad cases within months, they have beautiful pink gums.

Everything… The, the pockets are all closed. And th- these are just anecdotal of observations. We can’t make a medical claim or say, “Oh, well, you do this and it’s gonna do that.” We just kept seeing it over and over again. Or some people would just put it on their tongue ’cause it kinda numbs you a little bit and it super freshens your mouth.

And you… They swish it around for a couple of minutes, and that alone was helping them with their dental. But the main function of the Solaris is, is it’s a gentle, very powerful detox that doesn’t release a bunch of metals where you’re gonna get headaches, and you’re gonna have all these things like fungus released and all that stuff.

It converts these pathogenic toxins in your body into inert matter. It just neutralizes them, so then your body can expel them safely. And it helps with gut health. But the main, the main event, what we were told right out of the gate, is that it helps the cell live longer because it cleans up the salinity transfer in the cell membrane to be clean so that nutrients can go in and ex- and waste products can go out. Plus it’s getting rid of all the heavy metal and fungal infections and yeast overgrowths and chemical garbage that is interrupting the life of the cell.

So when the cell lives longer, then it reproduces slower, ’cause you don’t need as many, as much reproduction, which is actually a thing that will extend your life in a healthy way. So that’s really what it was. And we had people with life-threatening lesions on their skin, and I was told, “If you put it on there, couple of weeks it’s gonna blow up and dry up, and you peel it off without a scar.”

So I told some people. I didn’t ever have that myself, but we saw it. We observed people putting it on, and sure enough, within a couple of weeks that stuff was gone. And, and so yeah, that’s Solaris. It’s pretty crazy stuff.

Katie: Well, and I’ll link to that as well, and I feel like this brings up another question, that I’m guessing there’s a strong reason for. And I’m curious why you focus so heavily on liquid supplementation, ’cause that’s a thing I’ve noticed of the products I use for you is they’re often liquid form, not powder or capsule. And I’m curious the reasoning behind that.

Ian: You know, it, it was not an intentional thing. It, it, for some reason, that’s just the way everything showed up.

And it w- was just like that was the pattern. It was like I was being directed and okay, it’s gonna come, like, in that form. Now, we could take our products and put it in capsules, and some of them are challenging that way ’cause they might melt the capsule if there’s a… water content’s too high. But we just didn’t do the dosage form.

I, I’m not against it because a lot of the stuff you just gotta get it in your system, and some people just like to, you know, instead of fumbling around with a dropper bottle or a liquid, they like to have a dosage form where they just take the capsule and get their dose that way. But yeah, we just… we never went there.

And we had, you know, we have, like, only, like, K2-D3. I wouldn’t even have allowed that in the line because there were so many companies doing K2-D3 already. I thought, “Why would we do that?” And then I found out that there’s a trans factor and a 72-hour half-life that you gotta have in the, in the original source of…

That stuff has to be studied properly. And I just thought, “Okay, that’s one thing that’s not being done. 98% of the time is not good, so let’s just do the top of the line for that one.” So that… But that again came in a dropper. It was MCT oil that you just put it in. So yeah, that’s… I, I really didn’t plan on it, but that’s how it ended up.

Katie: And I also know you and I have both been kind of in the health world for now decades, and I know I’ve been through… I even did a podcast recently on, like, things I’ve changed my mind on. Because as you learn, hopefully you, like, shift and evolve as you go. So I’m curious if there’s anything that comes up top of mind for you of, like, what have you changed your mind on over the years?

I would say the biggest change, I would recently is that, well, you can’t hack your system. The bo- the body’s way, way, way too intelligent to hack. You can support and optimize. I like to… I, I think I, I would change the word biohacking to bio-optimization, would be one big change. And then being like no, no, you know, not allowing any kind of glyconutrition other than convert- my body converting, meat and, like, proteins and fats into D-glucose.

And, and just being like sugars are out… Well, sugar is really not good. I don’t touch sugar. I stay away from carbs, but I’ve learned what my body requires and what I’ve been doing, and this is something that we’ll have to talk about at a later time. But just dropping a hint, I, I consume a significant amount of a very specific type of carb that has completely changed my life.

And it’s empowered my body in a way that… But I’m still in the, in the integration phase, so it’s not ready to be rolled out yet. But already what I’ve seen has just been mind-blowing, and this is based upon a very private study that started around 2017. And just like you, you, you, you always kind of looked at things and you said, “Hey, I’m looking at this, I’m doing that.

And I’ll let you know as soon as I establish for sure all the, all the different parts of this.” So that’s one of those situations. But I very much changed my mind on that. On the leptin sensitivity, what it is, how it works. I think a lot of people who teach about that are not correct on it, and they don’t…

It’s not that they’re trying to be wrong. They’re not at all. They, they’re sincerely wanting to be right, and they think that their research has shown them what’s going on. And, you know, just h- being more simple with food. Simplifying everything. Less complex. Doing less gives you more results. And you know what it’s like when we go to these events.

You know, there’s an endless number of things you can do, and every company produces thousands of different products out in the market, and they all say that they have the best, and they all say that you need it ’cause that’s why they produce it. But reality is that there’s good, great, greater, and greatest.

And once you are able to discern yourself what are the greatest levels, and then you can learn that people have earned integrity. I think all of us have to earn trust, and we have to earn integrity. We can’t just assume we have it or, or tell somebody, “You can trust me.” No, I want you to trust you, and I want you to follow you by us sharing the most important information that allows you to make your decisions.

I don’t know, Katie, if you were like this, but when I would find something really, really cool and super exciting, I would tell everybody, and I would tell them, “Everybody, you should do this.” Well, that’s ridiculous. Who am I to tell them? Or why, why… It was almost like this control issue thing. So I changed my mind a lot about like just chill out, man.

I’m here to support everyone where they’re at. I don’t want them to be anywhere but where they are right now, and I want people to do what they want to do, not what I want them to do or not what I think they should do. And that, that way, everyone gets to make their own mind up and feel really good about it.

I think, Katie, if you think in your life, the things that you’ve done consistently, you’ve been enthusiastic about, you’ve enjoyed yourself thoroughly doing it, and, and you stuck with it, that was things you decided to do, not, not what somebody told you to do or tried to convince you to do, right?

Katie: Yeah, absolutely. Those are the ones that stick definitely. And I, like you, have simplified, like after all these years and like trying all the expensive bio hacks and all the supplements and all the protocols, I’ve like come to a much more simplified place now. And I think there is often a time and a place for many of those things, but it’s not all the time and it’s not every person.

And like I said in the beginning, I keep going back to like nature created everything perfectly. And so sometimes we do need additional support to kind of counteract a modern lifestyle and nature still always got it right. And like you said, the body is too highly intelligent to hack. I love that, that line.

So if we start with trying to get back into our natural environment as much as possible, reestablish communication with our body and simplify, I think that goes such a long way in the kind of the wellness journey. And it sounds like we can have a future conversation on glucose, carbs, and leptin as well. That sounds fascinating.

Ian: Yeah, that’s gonna be a fun one. That, that shouldn’t be too far down the road.

Katie: Yeah, definitely let’s do it. And as we get close to the end of the time for this episode, I’m curious two last things. The first being, what daily practices or what things still make the cut for you?

Like, what things do you personally prioritize for your longevity and perfect health?

Ian: Tthe biggest one is setting a routine and being consistent instead of intensive. Just forming these habits. You know, you wake up in the morning, what is the first thing you’re gonna do? Well, you’re gonna hydrate. You know, then you’re going to have…

You know, I just like to have nutrition within one hour of waking up, you know, the proteins and the fats, and that’s where I’ll have the majority of the food for the day. That’s a, was a big shift. And then being, prepared, like having something that I can carry with me that… for hydrating to make sure that I don’t gap on things.

And then I’m thinking about everyone else around me all the time. Like, what is… What can I do to support people every single day? And, you know, making sure that there’s nobody left behind, that there, there’s always something that’s gonna be learned that day or something that’s gonna be further experienced. Knowing that every single day of our life we’re gonna get a little bit healthier in every category as we get older, and remembering that getting older means you’re, you’ve been here longer.

Doesn’t mean you’re aging, right? So I had to reverse age a whole bunch because I was so rapidly aging I was gonna be dead in my 40s. That was really dumb. So I had to reverse back that to, you know, getting so that we are a little bit healthier every single day and touching all the right things. So getting the routine of the better time to go to sleep and, you know, like adjusting the light on my phone to amber, you know, and away from the blue during the day, and having all these little practices, these things we do.

If you’re gonna, if you’re gonna work out, whichever day it’s gonna be, you want to have… It’s a routine. Routine. And having people aware of what your routine is, having your quiet private time for you. And so… And then just being there for everybody otherwise. Once you get yourself taken care of at the beginning of the day, then your day is for everyone else around you.

Katie: I love it. And lastly, if someone is still working through some health challenges or just getting started, or feels overwhelmed like I did for many years, what would you recommend as a starting point?

Ian: Of what they say to themselves. First of all, don’t accept any diagnosis, but don’t ignore symptoms.

And know that symptoms are simply alarms going off. So the first thing is to tell yourself that you’re in a safe place, that your body is definitely fully capable of healing whatever challenge is there, and that your goal is perfect health. Just set the goal. Make the claim. Just say, “Perfect health is, is my God-given right on this earth.”

And when you do that, you don’t have to achieve perfect health. All the, the knowledge and the wisdom and the tools and the elements are gonna show up to support you to have that goal. You’re simply making the claim and letting things show up. And speak very kindly about yourself. Love yourself. And speak very kindly behind other people’s backs because your relationships…

Just think about the people in your life. There’s people who play little bit parts that you only see once in a while. There’s people who play, you know, a little bit more larger roles. And then you have your, the people in your life that play major roles in the movie of your life, right? So you’ve got… The people are the, are the biggest thing.

Always talk very well about them behind their backs because everyone has, you know, there’s the 90/10 rule or the 80/20 rule, whatever you wanna look at it. People have amazing, wonderful gifts about them and amazing attributes. Focus on those and talk about those things behind their backs about them. And cover people’s weaknesses.

That way, you’re not looking for a thing to criticize. When you do that, people are gonna do the same for you. If I run into you and I start talking badly about somebody, you know I’m gonna do that about you. If I show up and I’m actually sincerely, genuinely finding real things about people that you can identify and appreciate and I talk about that, that’s what I’ll do for you and that’s what you’ll do for me.

So it’s just having a much more fun time.

Katie: I think that’s a great, place to put a pin in it for today. We will, put a pin there to circle back for glucose, carbs, and leptin sometime really soon. But Ian, always an absolute pleasure. So fun to have conversations with you always, and to get to record them especially.

Thank you so much for your time and for your wisdom, for all that you share, for willing to reevaluate and be wrong, and just for all that you do for the world.

Ian: Thank you, Katie. Appreciate it.

Katie: And thank you as always for listening, and I hope you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.

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About Katie Wells

Katie Wells, CTNC, MCHC, Founder of Wellness Mama and Co-founder of Wellnesse, has a background in research, journalism, and nutrition. As a mom of seven, she turned to research and took health into her own hands to find answers to her health problems. WellnessMama.com is the culmination of her thousands of hours of research and all posts are medically reviewed and verified by the Wellness Mama research team. Katie is also the author of the bestselling books The Wellness Mama Cookbook and The Wellness Mama 5-Step Lifestyle Detox.

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