514: Teri Cochrane on How Genes, Viruses, Emotions, and Stress Impact Health

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Katie: Hello, and welcome to the “Wellness Mama Podcast”. I’m Katie, from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com. That’s wellnesse with an e on the end. And this episode was super, super informative I’m here with the brilliant Dr. Teri Cochrane. She’s the founder of the Global Sustainable Health Institute and an international thought leader on longevity, as well as many other things that we delve into today.

 

She has decades of clinical work, and she’d developed the Cochrane Method, which is, if a future-facing multi-system health and longevity model, as well as the Wildatarian Diet, which we talk about today. And she helps people with the intersection of genetic expression due to pathogenic and environmental causes, energy and a personal blueprint based on a variety of lifestyle factors. And we get into a lot of those today, from the role viruses, and bacteria, and fungus play in gene expression, why genes are only a small part of health, but an important one, and how to influence our genes to our advantage, or to stop doing things that are disadvantaging us, how viruses, including the herpes family of viruses, can be latented to the body, but then have a big impact on health, what biofilms are, what amyloids are, and fascinating talks about how thoughts directly affect our biology and our DNA, also the role of insulin in longevity and aging, and so much more. She truly is an absolute wealth of knowledge and a pleasure to talk to. I learned a lot in this interview, and I know that you will as well. So, let’s join Teri. Teri, welcome. Thanks for being here.

 

Teri: Oh, it’s so good to be with you and your audience Katie.

 

Katie: Well, I’m so excited to chat with you because you are knowledgeable about so many different topics. And we’re gonna go into a lot of them. But first, I’d love to just as a fun note, I have notes in my show notes about you that you didn’t learn to cook till you were 40, which is fascinating to me. And that you are a Cuban refugee, which I didn’t know. So I would love to just hear a little about those.

 

Teri: Yes. So why did I not learn to cook until I was 40? Well, I had a very interesting corporate career, where I was asked to travel quite regularly. I ran one of the business units for Freddie Mac in their multifamily division. And I was always on the road. And I had two small kids. And so we were lucky enough to have this beautiful fairy godmother that would have dinner prepared for me when I came home from work, the nights that I was there. And she was fabulous with our kids, and everything was made from scratch. So what I learned to do is just show up for dinner.

 

And then when I started to see a real issue with my son, I actually left my career. And that’s when I started to learn how to cook. And I’ve never stopped so I consider cooking a real meditative process for me. And it is the way that I do art. It’s like blank canvases and I create beautiful colors and flavors from a blank canvas. So it’s become a wonderful gift for me, I just didn’t even know that it was something that I would love so much.

 

And in terms of a Cuban refugee, yes. So I was born in Cuba, my parents and their parents are from Spain. And we left in the mid-’60s as refugees so we lost everything. We came to Indianapolis, we didn’t know how to speak English, we didn’t have any resources. And what my family instilled in me is to be a solution seeker, that we were never really in a victim mode. And to really be in that mindset of what can I do with what I have now? And how can I foster first always an environment of learning and an environment of understanding and respecting self? That you never lost integrity for self even though you may not have had the financial resources and/or access to what was even available.

 

My parents never even took any subsidy, they just did it all on their own. So it was instrumental in my formative years on how I looked at my parents and how they navigated a lot of rigor, and it really shaped me.

 

Katie: Wow, that’s amazing. I got to go to Cuba a couple of years ago, and I fell in love with all the people I met there. They were so amazing. And there’s so many beautiful parts of the culture. And I didn’t know that about your history. That’s really cool.

 

Teri: Yes. Thank you that’s wonderful.

 

Katie: So you mentioned institutional finance, which is quite different from nutrition and health. And you mentioned it had to do with your son. But I would love to hear a little bit more about that story because you obviously are highly accomplished now in both of those fields. But I’m curious to hear more of the details of how you switched.

 

Teri: Yes, so it’s really a journey of my life’s mission, actually come to life. I never thought I would be working in the field of personalized health and wellness. And precision nutrition, and epigenetics and biochemistry and sort of quantum, quantum teaching, and quantum physics and biology. But, you know, sometimes life throws us a little bit of a wrench, and then we start becoming great skilled toolsmen with the wrench that’s thrown at us.

 

So my son, my firstborn, by the age of three, we were told to expect brain seizures, that he would not grow past 5 foot 4. He had failure to thrive. He had the bone density of an 18-month-old. We were constantly going to the emergency room with life-threatening asthma attacks. He had such allergic shiners by second grade, that year he contracted strep throat 11 times so every month it was strep.

 

And now in the rearview mirror, the reason why strep was so prevalent is he was being given daily doses of high-level Prednisone to keep him breathing. And that Prednisone as we know is a fire starter for pathogenic dysbiosis in the gut and particularly strep.

 

So it was really a cycle of illness and he was really falling off the cliff. So I decided that when allopathic medicine failed me I would use that solution-seeking mindset that my parents had instilled in me, to apply it to how do I help resolve what’s going on with my son? And as you noted institutional finance risk management and I was a risk manager. And I managed billions of dollars of real estate assets and the risk of those assets for this company. And so I applied that learning to how can I manage my son’s health situation? How do I risk manage his health profile?

 

And so that really led me down a path of incredible and deep research. And this is before the internet or Google, he’s almost 28 now so you can imagine he was just a little guy. So it’s, you know, over two decades ago. And I just became a rabid researcher and finally made the correlation around, oh, my, gosh, the foods we’re feeding him are literally poisoning my son. And even though these foods were homemade, I was still feeding him peanut butter, and I was feeding him gluten and a lot of citrus. And he had bleeding eczema. And we know now that orange, which is a high sugar and a high acid is really a fire starter for the sugar fire starter for that eczema, which is also fungal, which is tied to the strep that he was having so much trouble with.

 

So when we eliminated corn, wheat, peanuts, citrus, and dairy, within five days, we started noticing a significant shift in his breathing, that he was better able to breathe, and we had a peak flow meter, so we could actually measure it. So we were having some real, not just anecdotal results, we were having some clear feedback from his body that his lung capacity was already starting to improve. And so that really became the genesis of my path in healing others. And I decided to leave that career, when I wanted to be that mom, for other moms that were told, “Hey, you’re gonna have a broken child and deal with it.” So I wanted to be that voice for those moms.

 

Katie: That’s an amazing story, a little bit of similarity to my own in that reading. When my first son was born, that his generation would be the first in two centuries to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. And wanting a better life for my kids and for everyone else’s kids, and realizing like, you did you, I think realized much earlier. But realizing there weren’t great resources that made it easy for moms and moms are the busiest people on the planet. And so wanting to find a way to help kind of bridge that gap and I know for you, I’m familiar with your book, “The Wildatarian Diet.” And that probably this inadvertently, in a long way led to your work in that. But for people who aren’t familiar with that, can you explain what “The Wildatarian Diet” is?

 

Teri: Yes. And thank you, Katie, for all the work that you do, because it’s mamas like us, that you know, become paradigm breakers and help forge a whole new way of thinking. So “The Wildatarian Diet” is, the subtitle is “living as nature intended.” And clearly, we have moved away from living as nature intended, both in the stress that we have to be surrounded by every day, but also the quality of our food supply. And it goes beyond the fact that we are having pesticides and hormones. These foods now are inherently different at a core biochemical level, which is then altering the way that our genes are expressed.

 

And so we are seeing over and over again that we have to eat to our genetic blueprint and our current state of health. And I just wanna underscore our current state of health. And part of the wildatarian adaptation is you take a quiz, you find out your wild type, and that wild type will guide you to what foods are best suited for you given the symptomology that you’re experiencing. And the questions are very intentional. Because underlying those questions, although we may not have your genetic profile, which we can do when you come and see us in our practice, we do nutrigenomic analysis. Just taking the quiz will guide you to what could potentially be a genetic predisposition, if you will.

 

So, for example, if you have trouble building muscle, if you burp after eating, if you get tired really easily, if you have undigested food in your stool. That’s a protein malabsorption issue, which has to do with methylation, which has to do with an MTHFR gene polymorphism. Where we don’t have the methyl donors that give us the hydrochloric acid necessarily to make those enzymes that help us break down our food.

 

Similarly, if you have asthma, if you’ve had symptoms of dysbiotic gut and a lot of IBS, if you have arthritis then eating foods such as cabbage and cauliflower, broccoli eating, and kale could really be disrupting that sulfur mechanism that speaks to certain genetics that would lead to that impairment. We literally just had someone who just ate based on her wild type, and her rheumatoid arthritis… I’ve never met her. But we got the feedback, her rheumatoid arthritis is almost gone. And this isn’t a matter of a month. And in this case, this woman was a wild type that needed to be a low sulfur wild type. And she’d been eating all these foods that were told, “Hey, eat that food is healthy for you.” Well, not according to her genetic blueprint and her current state of health.

 

Katie: Yeah, it’s so fascinating. I love delving into the realm of genetics. And I think a recurring theme I’m so excited to see in the health and wellness world, is the importance of individualization. Because you’re right, we can see and I’ve said before, I can make a case for how almost any food could be really healthy for you, or really bad for you. And it really is that personalization and figuring it out. And we’re starting to have the tools to be able to do that. I’m excited for the ones that seem to be coming as well. But to be able to like, really break that down and figure that out.

 

And for me, as an example, I learned, like I don’t do great with saturated fat, even though we went through that whole phase of fat is bad, no way, it’s not as bad. It depends on the person. And I do better when I limit saturated fat. But for some people, they might do great with it in certain amounts. And it’s finding those things out for yourself. And I know you’re also big on people becoming their own primary health care provider and taking ownership of their health. And I think this is a lot of the work you do with the Cochrane method as well, right? Can you explain what that is?

 

Teri: Yes. So the Cochrane Method is really the umbrella methodology that underpins everything that I do, how I practice in a clinical practice. And I have a naturopathic doctor that’s trained under this method. How I developed my supplements, it’s an underpinning of “The Wildatarian Diet” as well. And yes, our goal is primarily to be your best advocate and educator for your own facility around body talk, right? So really become that sovereign interpreter of what your body is telling you.

 

And the Cochrane Method is rooted in the four portals of genetic expression. Because ultimately, it doesn’t matter what our genes are. And I know there’s a big push for our genes, and I’m very pro gene, I understand them. But it’s what caused its expression? Because if the genes are unexpressed against our favor, it doesn’t matter what your genes are, because they’re gonna leave you alone.

 

But the Cochrane method seeks to look at pathogens, which includes bacteria, viral and parasitic, as well as fungal loads. It looks at the environment, which includes foods and parabens and toxins and heavy metals and even healthy fats, right. So again, back to the foodstuffs, that we may not even apply on our skin if we’re doing a lot of essential oils. And we are fat non-absorbed, that essential oil that we’re breathing in can actually be problematic. So that can be considered an environmental toxin.

 

And then we have the emotional aspect to our genetic expression. Because we know and according to the work of beautiful Dr. Bruce Lipton is that it’s the signal to the protein that creates the gene expression. And our biggest fire starter for that is our thinking, our thinking can shift the way that our body signals itself. And so that and also trauma, intergenerational trauma, we know that DNA also can be held in our…inter-generational DNA can be held on our cell membranes. So what was the family trauma? We have to work that through.

 

And then the last thing is a physical impact that can also have a genetic expression. So we look to seek and understand the why under those four components and then developed what I believe and I’m very proud of it a very elegant algorithm, but it’s very simple in its application.

 

Katie: And I think a key part of what you just said that is very encouraging and hopeful for a lot of people to understand more is the idea that our genes are not our destiny. And how you just explained it like they’re actually only a small part, they’re an important piece to understand. But they are definitely not going to be a…like you have a lot of ability more than we thought to influence how that works.

 

I’d love to hear more about the bacterial, viral, fungal role in that because I feel like this is an area that isn’t talked about as much. There’s a lot of talk about nutrition and how that influences our genes and now light and how that influences our genes. I feel like this world is harder to understand and maybe harder to test for perhaps but also just gets ignored because it’s more complicated.

 

Teri: Yes. And I think that’s one of the pioneering elements of my work. And we have a lot of doctors actually that are shadowing our practice now trying to understand. And really are intrigued and fascinated by what they’re seeing in my practice every day in terms of they’re actually shadowing clinical consultations. And so, what we have found and we have validated through clinical research that exists out there but has never been integrated the way that we’ve integrated it is that when we have a viral or bacterial reactivation, and we…for example, Epstein-Barr. The Epstein-Barr virus falls under the umbrella of the herpes family of viruses. And the herpes family of viruses includes the cytomegalovirus, it includes herpes 1 to 6. And includes varicella and includes other kinds of viruses under that herpes umbrella.

 

And what we’re finding is when those viruses become reactivated, they can actually have a potential genetic expression. So, for example, if you have Epstein-Barr in your thyroid, it likes to hide in your thyroid, I call it puppet master. And Izabella Wentz is a good friend of mine. And, you know, we’ve talked a lot about this around viral reactivation related to Epstein-Barr. We find that the doctors will miss why you’re in a thyroid storm.

 

And so they keep changing the hormone levels of the thyroid, and it’s just creating more liver toxicity because they can’t assimilate that additional hormone. And instead, what that Epstein-Barr is doing is potentially tripping a COMT gene, which has to do with how you recycle estrogen, which then binds the thyroid hormone. Or it could be dripping the INSR gene polymorphism, which has to do with how you manage insulin, which also affects the thyroid, right.

 

And so also these little viruses hijack our body’s ability to process proteins because again, managing that genetic expression. We’ve certainly linked streptococcus aureus to the pediatric autoimmune psychiatric condition. Because the strep will actually trip the insulin receptors and insulin is really rooted in that PANDAS and PANS, which I’m seeing so much of, Katie.

 

So for your moms out there that are listening, it’s become epidemic. And this is an autoimmune disease that these children have become, under the age of 10 even, have become homicidal and suicidal. Because their biochemistry shifts that these genes are being tripped. That has to do with catecholamines and neurotransmitters are being shipped through these bacterias that are what I call bullies in our sandbox.

 

And so what we find is, in many cases, trying to treat it just at the bacterial level is not enough. You’ve got to treat it at that gene level to say, how do we then manage this gene expression? So, for example, if you have the COMT gene which handles the catecholamines of dopamine, which is super tied to the PANDAS. Then we have to provide some choline, we need to provide some bile salts. So then you can help break down the biofilm of these pathogens that exercise and trip these genes.

 

So got a little nerdy there, but it’s really important to really understand that we can no longer just stop at this level. And even my naturopath as I was training her under my method. I had to have her continue to follow the thread. No, it doesn’t stop at the hormone level, or it doesn’t stop at the antibiotic level. We’ve got to look at the why, right. Where’s the gene that was tripped? And how can we bring that gene back into a balanced expression rather than this re-expression that’s out of bounds?

 

Katie: That makes sense. And it seems like most traditional doctors, at least it’s like, okay, we’ve identified a hormone problem. So that’s obviously the answer let’s treat the hormone. But like you’re explaining it could be layers deeper than that. And you have to keep going. To understand the virus side more or bacterial side what are some of the things that can activate or reactivate those? And then what are some of the steps to undoing that if it’s already happening in the body?

 

Teri: Yes. So, for example, eating the right wrong foods. So, for example, I just had an acupuncturist here right before we went on air, and a very skilled acupuncturist trained in oriental medicine. And she was eating a lot of almonds and black beans and she was taking actually a glutathione IV. And glutathione is a high sulfur compound. And what we found was that these foods were actually creating a biofilm. They were helping to fortify biofilm and I call biofilm the dirty jelly doughnut. So it’s this lipid layer. It’s that fat layer that helps to fortify and hold these bacteria, viruses, and fungi in their little fortresses.

 

And so foods that we’re eating that are oxalate rich will help to form that biofilm because oxalates helped to build Aspergillus, which is a fungal organism its mold effectively. And so this wrong right foods and wrong right supplementation was actually fortifying these pathogens. And she couldn’t get rid of her staph, and we had a GI-MAP so we knew. We also had some, you know, also third-party evidence that the biofilm was keeping staph and candida and strep in place, which was then causing her cystic acne, her heavy periods, her edema, her foggy-headedness, anxiety. So it’s a big deal.

 

Katie: And you also mentioned the emotional aspect to genetic expression. And this is another one I’d love to talk in-depth about because I think this one also is not well understood yet and is often ignored. And I saw firsthand in my life, just how profound, because I was doing the dietary stuff, and I was doing the exercise and the sunlight and all those things.

 

And it wasn’t until I dealt with the emotional component that all of those things actually started working and I saw the big shifts. And I think it’s hard to understand because we can kind of maybe pinpoint, I ate a certain food, and now I don’t feel good, or I had this hormone thing. But understanding that mind-body connection and how you said like our thoughts actually physically influence our DNA in our bodies. Can you explain that more?

 

Teri: Absolutely. So I say that thought creates the thing. And when first of all studies out of UPenn show that when we entertain thoughts that are negative, every thought we think carries a frequency. And depending on where that frequency lives, you’re either going to elevate your immune system and leave those bugs alone. Or lower your immune system and trick those bugs, which then trips the genes which then you know, there goes the cascade.

 

But what we do know is thoughts of resentment, anger, fear, just fill in in the blank can lower our immune system for up to 50% for up to five hours. So we’ve just dropped our immunology by up to 50% anytime we’re afraid, or when we’re upset. And it’s not to say that we can never be afraid or upset in life this is part of our learning and our growth. However, it’s staying in that constant drip of this negative thought process that escalates the probability of an immune system shift.

 

Another thing is when we push, there’s two stress hormones, which are highly deleterious to our health on multiple levels. One is adrenaline or epinephrine. And I call that the dirty cupcake. So every time we’re in a state of fight-or-flight, we’re effectively eating a dirty cupcake. Why do I call it a dirty cupcake? Because it’s a fat and a sugar, it’s a neurohormone that contains a fat and a sugar. And the research that we actually haven’t though “The Wildatarian Diet” book, we have many citations. Because of what I was stating, I wanted everything that I stated, to be validated by clinical evidence.

 

So we found the research out there that it opens up the tight junctions of your GI tract. And our gut should be like pantyhose where it’s very small molecules. And so only that can break through the intestinal barrier and then be absorbed by our cells. We go from pantyhose like this, to fishnet stockings. So now we’ve got a much more wider gap in the tight junctions of our gut causing larger molecules to pass into through the intestinal barrier. And the body goes, “Oh-oh, you’ve not been broken down, I don’t recognize you, I’m gonna attack with histamine.” And then they’ll become an antigen, and then even eventually an antibody. So it gives us a leaky gut.

 

The second thing is that epinephrine being the dirty cupcake is a fat. So for those of us that have fat metabolism impairment genes, like the COMT gene, or the VDR gene, or the MTHFR C677T polymorphism, that relates to fat metabolism. Oh-oh, now, we can’t process that. That means we’re not breaking down our estrogen, we’re not breaking down our insulin, our thyroid hormones aren’t working appropriately. When we can’t break down our insulin, we’re gonna gather that middle belly fat, which then creates more adipose tissue or fat, which we’re carrying more toxins, right. So then we create this toxic burden.

 

And the third thing is epinephrine strikes a match to the pathogens, it literally feeds them. It’s a feeder system, to the bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites that live commensally in our body. And so now we’ve got bullies in our sandbox that have been fed by a thought, by a stress event. And so it’s very, very important.

 

And I would say, and I do say in the Cochrane Method, the hierarchy of needs before we do anything else, is we have to calm the system first. Calm that epinephrine response because if you don’t, using the best botanicals and the best methodology will still be an uphill battle. You’re swimming upstream because that epinephrine and cortisol is still being pushed making it much more difficult to obtain a desired outcome and a sustainable outcome.

 

Katie: Well, I guess the big question that’s probably a long answer, but is how do we deal with that? Because it seems more straightforward to say, “Okay, you have genetic issues with these foods, and it’s causing these activations of your genes that you don’t want. So just avoid those foods.” From all their media I’ve seen, stress is one of the biggest epidemics we have right now. And we have I feel like a society that just constantly feeds us like you mentioned that afraid or upset, I feel like our new cycle just is a button of constant anger, upset, fear. So how do you get people to start addressing that stress cycle?

 

Teri: Great question. One of the things that I really share with my clients and those that I counsel is that we have more sovereignty than we know. And what we do know is first, understand the landscape in which you’re dealing with. Every day, there’s gonna be another shoe dropping, we’re living in an environment in a society right now, that’s highly uncertain.

 

And so understanding that this may become the new normal, and so we are very adaptive, we’re adaptive species. And so adapting to the fact that whatever is outside of me, that no one or no thing has power over me. That I can choose to stay in a state of balance even if I’ve heard like the tornadoes that happened this weekend, this past weekend. I know when we hear this, it’ll be beyond that. It was devastating to many states. And so that’s just another shoe to drop.

 

And so how we respond to an external event will have a direct exposure on how well we can manage that external event. And so just having that understanding of saying no one or nothing has that power over me and I will be an act in a pragmatic way. I’m not gonna stick my head in the sand, because avoiding it doesn’t help either, because it’s just suppression of what’s actually happening.

 

But to really have authority over the mind, saying, “Okay, I understand this is not good, but I’m going to manage it in a way by…” I have a stop, drop and roll methodology that I employ. Which is, first of all, we have to always check in with ourselves and say, “Am I feeling contracted in my body right now? Am I having a negative thought pattern? Or am I having an expansive thought pattern? Am I in a state of at least peace or a balance?”

 

So anytime we fall out of that, and this is a constant check-in, we have the ability to stop it and then drop it. And how do we drop it? Well, what we are signaling to ourselves in that moment is energy. And so we have to shift the energetic frequency of what just got signaled. And how do we do that? We have to move energy, energy just doesn’t go away. And so we can move our body, you can do a little jiggle, right? I have little kids wiggling all the time, we have little wiggle rooms, in people’s houses where they can shake it off, right? You can sing, you can talk, you can do any kind of fluid movement with your body is important. So that’s the drop.

 

And then the roll is to roll into and have these at your ready memories, or a scent or a new music that will bring you into a higher state of frequency and bring that balance back. And Katie, what happens is when you get practiced at this, it almost becomes second nature, because the body is a big pattern. And we live by patterns. And right now the bigger pattern is, stay in a state of fear. And I reject that. And what I do know is when we reject that, and we become aligned in our sovereign power, things start to become easier. And we’ll make better decisions because we also lose up to 50 points of IQ when we’re in a state of stress, we will not make the best decision when we are stressed.

 

And so knowing that and understanding that we can get sick and have less cognition when we’re stressed, I choose the other. And that’s our sovereign right to do that. Knowing that we always have a choice on how we react to what’s happening around us is very powerful because we think we don’t, but we do.

 

Katie: Yeah, I think that’s so important. And like I said, it was a big key for me that I didn’t really understand for a very long time. And I’m still learning, I think that is part of the lifelong journey that we continue to be able to improve on. But it seems like as we’re talking about all these things and all or most of them are like layers of health, that they’re all connected in some way. And probably very rarely is there a single cause and effect reaction when we’re talking about these more intricate aspects of health.

 

So with that said with all these things we know are going on and increasing right now whether it’s obesity, diabetes, mental health issues, autoimmune disease, cancer. What do you see as a solution for these because it seems like we’re just seeing a rise in everything right now?

 

Teri: The first thing is to again, understand the why behind it. I think once we become educated in our why it takes away its power, right? And so really looking to what are the genetic vulnerabilities, we’ll just say, that are the underpinning to this? How am I choosing to eat in a way that supports the optimal expression of my genes? And who do I wish to be in a community with? That it’s either going to support a community of fear and devolution of our species because moms are very powerful. And moms and the community can make a huge impact as dads. But the mama bears we’re focusing on the mama bears today, is to be in that community of an informed choice, and informed action.

 

And this is gonna have to be a grassroots effort where moms are gonna say, “No, I’m not gonna feed my kids that GoGURT that has 10 different food colors, that’s gonna make them hyperactive.” And then the doctors are gonna say, “Well, they need ADHD medication.” Well, maybe it was the food dye, right? So you’re not drugging your kids when they don’t need to be drugged. And taking a stand for what might be not the easy way, but the right way.

 

And so coalescing around communities of informed decision-makers, and really understanding the why, why is my child all of a sudden having tics? And having behavior that is obsessive-compulsive? Oh, well, maybe he’s got this overactive candida, which is a fungal organism, which is disrupting his dopamine. And so I need to stop feeding him anything that is high in sugar. Or anything that’s a high oxalate food like that almond milk that I was told to give him when I was told to stop dairy because he had all these ear infections. So understanding the why.

 

And one of the things that our work has done has created a community of these incredibly informed powerful moms and dads. That takes a stand for their children and really promote wellness.

 

We had a child, this is a true story. I’ve been working with her since she was 10 months old. She was anaphylactic to over 52 foods, 52 foods, Katie. So this mom lives in a constant state of fear. We understood she had very difficult liver detoxification processes which was just making her histamine go through the roof. She also has a DA OG, which increases the system response. She is now micro-dosing all those foods she was allergic to and doing great. Her name is Liliana, I’m very proud of her.

 

And this little girl who’s now 10 is such an informed consumer of what is right for her body. She doesn’t fear food, and she is such authority over her little body. That is, that girl will have a lifelong gift not only will she not potentially die from what could have killed her before, but she’s now in authority for what are her best foods.

 

And so that’s the power of one mom that said, “No, I’m going to choose a different way. And I’m not gonna keep drugging my daughter with steroids to stop the histamine response and/or epinephrine, which is causing the epinephrine, the dirty cupcake causing her other hormones to be imbalanced.”

 

Katie: I agree. I think it does all start with moms. And I’ve said that before, like moms are the most powerful force on the planet, and also the busiest. And so anything we can do that gives moms practical tools has that ripple effect in so many ways.

 

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And I know another issue that affects moms and that I think is top of mind for me more and more as I get older is the idea of longevity and anti-aging and wanting to be around for my kids as long as possible. And I know that you are a medical adviser for the Da Vinci 50 Longevity Mastermind and that you’ve also done a lot of work here. I’m sure this is also an area of personalization, but I would love to hear any kind of generalities that are applicable for longevity.

 

Teri: Yes, so I believe one of the greatest cornerstones for longevity is managing our insulin. Insulin is such an inflammatory hormone. It’s so disruptive and really centerpiece in polycystic ovarian syndrome for women. Insulin disruption creates that middle belly fat which is so linked to heart disease which is the number one killer of men and women. Insulin has now been called our Types 3 diabetes which is inflammation of the brain in Alzheimer’s, right. Which is really become also epidemic in this generation, where we’d barely known Alzheimer’s. And now Alzheimer’s is becoming ever more a reality Alzheimer’s and dementia, a reality, that all hits longevity.

 

So, longevity from a polycystic ovarian syndrome, that really stops the fertility process right there because women with PCOS are more likely to be infertile. Individuals with diabetes will have a much shorter lifespan. We’ve been told, Katie that children are now expected to be, one in three children by the year 2040 are expected to be diabetic. That is the ripple effect for that in terms of infertility, obesity, Alzheimer’s, that all affects longevity. Insulin also affects the thyroid hormone. Insulin affects all of our organ systems, that’s why people are amputated when they’re diabetic. It affects the liver, the kidneys, pancreas, spleen, the gut, it affects everything. So we are facing a longevity crisis by insulin alone.

 

And what’s so beautiful about this is we have the power to turn that around. Once we become insulin sensitive, the longevity trajectory is exponential because of the metabolic markers that are no longer at risk for you. And Dr. David Sinclair, whom I really love, and have had the great pleasure of having long conversations with, his whole thing…He’s a geneticist from Harvard. His whole thing is I agree with him, it’s insulin. And so he really advocates Metformin, I prefer Berberine. I call it the poor man’s Metformin.

 

It’s also over-the-counter Berberine, it was one of the 10 most studied botanicals of 2018. And it’s been known to manage Type 2 diabetes, also helps with strep and Candida which can also dislodge insulin. It helps promote good gut microflora. It helps with kidney function. And so the biggest thing is, is that you know, the insulin just from the very, very kind of basic from a very basic perspective.

 

And then we look at what is cell death? How can we manage that senescence, that cell death? And there’s forms of NMN, which is a B3, we’re looking at. That there’s also, other antioxidants that we can look to. But you know, without getting too complex, let’s stop the insulin insensitivity derailment that we’re seeing in the United States.

 

Katie: It seems like yeah, we’re seeing a lot of tools for that and the ability to track it at home now much more easily. And it’s exciting to be able to have that data on a more regular basis for a lot of people, which and I know a lot of that goes back to diet as well. But thankfully, there are also other things we can do to help. I’m sure the answer to this question is also that there’s a lot of personalization. But I’m curious if there are any things that you come across that are very widespread, generally applicable things that work for most people. Even regardless of the gene differences that are kind of either universally good or universally bad?

 

Teri: Well, I think that in this environment, zinc is super important. And I like the form of zinc carnosine. Why is it super important? Well, back to insulin, zinc is really important for managing insulin. Zinc is really important for managing the thyroid. Zinc carnosine helps actually with the gut microbiome and the integrity of the gut. Zinc is also really important as an immune modulator. And very few people cannot take zinc.

 

Another one that I really love is quercetin. Quercetin is a bioflavonoid that helps to tighten those junctions of your gut. It also is a natural antihistamine and zinc and quercetin together really being you know, used together. I take it daily now, just as an overall, let’s keep zincing ourselves and our insulin, and our inflammatory response in check. So I think those are universally tolerated.

 

Another thing that I really love is to keep our livers clear. So our liver is our largest detoxifying organ, and many, many conditions start with a toxicity level. And so how do we keep our livers clear? Well, one thing is, just do a green juice every day even if you’re doing a little bit of cilantro drops in your juice that you can get that are organic.

 

If you don’t wanna juice every day, sea salt is also really underrated. We’re demineralized and salt is a great manager back to stress. When we are in a state of stress we deplete salt. And so sea salt that helps as an emulsifier, it helps with the sodium-potassium pump so the cells can communicate. It helps to break down fats. It helps like I said the adrenal response.

 

So a little bit of sea salt in the morning I start every morning, Katie, with a cilantro and cucumber juice then I add a little bit of sea salt too, I add some vitamin C. I do my wildlife, which is at Teri Cochrane branded formulation, which is an electrolyte powder that helps with nitric oxide, which is also so important in this world. And helps to manage my electrolytes while helping that sodium and potassium pump. So I start my every morning with a green juice that starts my day and helps my liver stay happy.

 

Katie: Those are great tips. And you mentioned supplements. I know you’ve done work in supplements yourself, I’d love to hear about those. And also to hear about what would be maybe your own 80/20 of things that you always do, and make sure to do every single day.

 

Teri: Absolutely. So I work with a lot of supplement companies because I have a large practice. And I started looking at a lot of the formulations and even in our larger brands. And it seemed that there were ingredients that could in many cases trip those genes that were the biggest gene movers, you know, in our genetic profiling. And I suggested to them, “Hey guys, I can help you formulate some things.” And they’re like, “No, it’s okay.”

 

So I decided to make my own, and Biotics as the maker of my supplement line. But this is called a “gene-smart” approach to the way that we supplement. So, for example, if you have a genetic predisposition where you cannot take turmeric. And more people cannot take turmeric than you would think. Turmeric is found in so many supplements can actually lower your detoxification by up to 50%.

 

Also, if you’re taking a lot of mushrooms. I just had a doctor shadow me last week…and many doctors believe that therapeutic mushrooms are good. Well not if you have a candida or fungal overgrowth. In the state of stress that we’re in we’re pushing a lot of those stress hormones that feed candida in our organisms. So any fungal therapeutic, even a mushroom would be problematic.

 

So I developed three supplements. One is supporting immune function, one supports stress, and then the wild-lytes which support electrolyte function. And we’ve had just, you know, tremendous success in those that take it. I work with world-class athletes and they take it on the daily, just especially the wild-lytes where they’re depleting their electrolytes and they say they don’t leave home without it.

 

So my personal kind of 80/20 for me is always zinc, always quercetin. I take my stress mood to remind me over my wild-lytes every day. Lately, I’m taking GABA, GABA is super important in the regulation of estrogen estradiol FSH LH. We’re finding that GABA’s second most concentrated location is in the pancreas. So back to that insulin regulation. Also, GABA is a neurotransmitter that helps to manage and calm.

 

So I’m taking GABA daily. I also take a little bit of the…glutathione I don’t take because I have sulfur sensitivity. But instead, I take my sea salt as a bile synthesizer because I do have that MTHFR C677T polymorphism that helps to not meet the facilitator of bile synthesis.

 

So simple things, we think we have to do a lot, but that’s really what I take every day. And then I move five days a week. And people think that you have to use large chunks of time to create a practice of exercise. I do it in 20-minute increments because sometimes that’s all I get. But I call it the practice of the practice. And that’s being consistent. As long as you’re consistent and you’re moving, which is moving that leg which is moving those thoughts.

 

I call my jogging every morning meditation in action because I’m really creating a meditative practice through the cadence of when my foot hits that concrete every morning. Or now that it’s getting colder I have a treadmill at home. So when it hits that treadmill rubber, it’s meditative for me. So exercise is really key.

 

And then again, every morning, I have a choice on how I’m going to think about my day. And I choose gratitude. I choose possibility. And even when it’s crunchy, I call it crunchy, when the days get really crunchy, I choose to smooth them out. And it’s amazing, Katie, because when you think of the work of quantum physics, which, you know, the work of Joe Dispenza I adore. Are really when we match a different frequency, our life is different.

 

And that’s the work of Einstein too, you know, he’s basically saying we exist at the frequency at which we live. And so we’re managing a low-frequency environment. This is what our life’s gonna look like if we’re here, we have a different life. And it’s quite beautiful, I’ve seen it happen over and over again and many of my clients and myself included.

 

Katie: I got to have Joe Dispenza on the podcast recently as well and loved getting to have a conversation with him. And I love that we got to talk a little about the science today of how truly our thoughts might actually be the most important factor when it comes to health. And how they directly influence gene expression and all these biological functions. And while it takes some learning, that is one thing we have control over.

 

Teri: That’s one of the most important things truly if we can bring back our sovereignty, which means our inalienable right to have authority over our thinking. It changes your life on many levels, including a metabolic level and an immune level.

 

Katie: Yeah, amazing. Like, I love Joe Dispenza’s work too, I think we’re learning more and more about the biology of what a lot of people with meditative practices have known for so many years. And I love your idea of meditation in action because I think meditation could be a hard thing for a lot of people when they think of it as sitting still and quieting the mind. But when we pair it with action, it makes it at least for me a lot more fun and easier to get in a routine of. And also the idea of starting the morning like that, because I think often we think, oh, I need the motivation to take action. But sometimes little actions are what create the motivation, to begin with.

 

Another question, I love to ask towards the end of interviews, and I’m sure you probably will have lots of great answers to this one as well, is if there’s a book or a number of books that have profoundly influenced your life, and if so, what they are and why?

 

Teri: So at 17, I was exposed to the work of Henry David Thoreau, who was an existentialist, and really a naturalist, and Walden Pond. So he went and sat in the woods of Massachusetts, for two years, two months, and two days, to reflect on what it was to be a living human being. And his philosophies around nature and the value of tuning into the frequency of nature, and the value of societal thinking at an elevated platform. And Thoreau was friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

 

And they had meetings on Sunday nights and they invited women into the discourse, which was very highly unusual in that time period. And what they did is they really took it back to nature. And so one of my favorite sayings from his is, “As I advance confidently in the direction of my dreams, I will leave some things behind, new and more liberal laws will present themselves to me, I will learn to live with a higher order of sentient beings. And I will gain success unexpected in common hours.”

 

That is a very powerful, very powerful…that’s what I live by, that, you know, as I move confidently in the direction of my dreams, and I have to leave some things behind. And that’s the fear. And that’s the dogma. And that’s someone telling me what I know better, because the body knows, right, that things will shift. And we will leave some things behind. But we will then be at a higher frequency effectively. So new laws will present themselves to new ways of learning and, you know, great, beautiful things will happen.

 

Katie: That’s such a wonderful book. And I love that quote as well. Another question I am excited for your answer for is a few more things that people either don’t know or don’t understand about your area of expertise.

 

Teri: Well, what they may not know is that I’m really delving into more of the quantum element of why we exist. And that we are energetic beings, but we vibrate at a molecular weight of movement that creates mass. And so we are connected as a collective. And it’s the collective consciousness that has an imprint to our planet, that we beat with the rhythm of Mother Earth. And when we are in a rhythm of fear and panic and uncertainty, the earth feels it.

 

And so back to the sovereignty of the individual on how we create a collective consciousness is, it’s really, I believe, it’s our responsibility to be in a frequency of possibility and hope and pragmatism, that creates an energetic shift. So my work as a medical intuitive has recently come out. I was on Ben Greenfield’s podcast recently, and we talked a lot about that.

 

So I’ve been given a gift, and I’m very honored to be able to help facilitate shifting on that level with others. But it really is, I’m not equipped solely, I believe we all have the capacity to be a vessel for the universal wisdom to flow through us. But in order to do that, we have to get out of our own way, if you will. And allow for the beauty which is the energy of the planet that is truly back to living as nature intended it, much like the work of Dr. Zach Bush, whom I also really, really respect. It’s really to become this global ambassador but doing it one person at a time to really shift the frequency for our planet, which needs it so much right now.

 

Katie: And I just noticed I have another note to ask you about amyloids because this is another thing I don’t think people maybe have even heard of. And I would love to have you explain that and explain why they’re important.

 

Teri: Yes. So back to “The Wildatarian Diet,” amyloids come from truncated proteins. These are proteins which are indigestible, found in the tissues, and the most studied are chicken, next studied is beef. But we are now consuming these indigestible proteins that we have linked to the reactivation of viruses, which then trip the genes. And so amyloids and if we think of amyloidosis. And if we think of the amyloid plaques in Alzheimer’s, but it’s also related to kidney disease, to diabetes to autoimmune conditions.

 

And so our food supply through these domesticated animal meats is creating a feeder system for viral and pathogenic reactivation, which then trips our genetics. And my work in “The Wildatarian Diet” was born from an end-stage cancer client that had end-stage amyloidosis and had been given his last rites. And this was over five, oh, gosh, almost eight years ago. I didn’t know what that was, at the time. I had an NIH expatriate who was a genetics researcher on my staff at the time. We looked it up and found oh, my gosh, they’re coming from the food supply, it could be a potential source.

 

And so this gentleman by the name of Glenn is actually featured in my book, within three months of eating a wild type diet, and actually his kidney… And he was in kidney and heart failure when he came to us. He had to be vegan for a while. But now he’s a beautiful, wildatarian that can eat wild meat, and they told him he would not survive. And they also told him since his lytes change normalized, which was the measure of those amyloids within three months. That it would come back, that the cancer would come back. Well, he’s been cancer-free for almost a decade now.

 

And so that really was the catapulting inspiration to start this why, you know, what is this wildatarian diet? It’s eating wild sustainable-fed meat and wild meat and wild fish and shellfish that do not contain the amyloid burden which is causing this cascading effect of viral and pathogenic reactivation, which then affects genetics, which then leads to such deleterious health conditions.

 

Katie: Amazing and any parting words of wisdom you wanna leave with the audience today? And how can they find and learn more from you?

 

Teri: Yes, well, back to the fact that the thought creates the thing, and that we have so much more power and more voice than we could ever imagine. You know, here I was a mom with a “broken” child, I was just one woman. But this one woman has now seen over tens of thousands of individuals whose lives have been transformed. And they have become the ripple in the pond. So that’s how powerful one voice is. And so I just really offer to all of your listeners that your voice is important. And you never know what one voice can have such a ripple effect like you, Katie, all the beautiful work that you have done.

 

And then how to find me on I’m pretty much on every social media platform. And tericochrane.com is where you can find all of the work that we do, we have a tremendous amount of body of research that we’ve done through our blogs. We’ve just launched a new website. So we’re putting more blogs up every day that were on our previous version of the website, but my book is on Amazon, both hardcopy and Kindle. So I’m just here to really just tell the truth around the power of an individual and the hope that we aren’t right for fear and so let’s do something different. And as a collective, things can really change for the better.

 

Katie: I love it. That’s a perfect place to end. This has been super informative. And I’d love to do a round two with you one day but thank you for your time today and for your wisdom and all the work you do.

 

Teri: Thank you, Katie. Thank you so much.

 

Katie: And thanks as always to all of you for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of “The Wellness Mama Podcast.”

 

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.