587: Naomi Whittel on Malnourished Skin and Why the Body Holds the Answer

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Katie: Hello, and welcome to “The Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com. And this episode is all about beauty from the inside out, the golden triangle of beauty, malnourished skin, and why the body always holds the answer. I am here with Naomi Whittel, who was born in Switzerland, educated in the U.S, and for more than 20 years has been exploring the world to uncover the most potent and effective natural health solutions on earth. She was named by “Prevention” as a leading innovator in the natural health products industry. And she’s a fierce advocate for empowering women to take control of their health and the health of their families. In this episode, we go deep on a lot of different things. She grew up on a biodynamic farm in Switzerland, had some early health challenges, and we talk about all the lessons she learned from that.

We talk about how our skin absorbs 60% of what we put on it, and how on average, most women interact with 500 plus chemicals on our skin per day. The nutrient she’s a big fan of, what essential fats are, and how these make a big difference in how we look in beauty standards. The thing that dry skin tells us about our body, why most of us have malnourished skin, what the golden triangle of beauty is, beauty proteins and how to use them, what Powerphenols are and why she coined this term, why sleep is the number one key to health and beauty, why the ratio of lean muscle to body fat is more important than weight and so much more. Very packed episode. She is so much fun to talk to. I know you’re gonna learn a lot, so let’s join Naomi. Naomi, welcome to the podcast.

Naomi: Thank you so much for having me here. I’m absolutely delighted to be with you.

Katie: Well, I am absolutely delighted that we get to have a conversation today, and you are knowledgeable on so many topics that we’re gonna get to dive into. But before we do, I, in researching for this episode, found out that you were given a honeybee hive when you were 12, and became a beekeeper. And I also actually took up beekeeping around the same age, and I don’t meet many people who also did. So I would just love to hear a little bit about what sparked that for you.

Naomi: Oh, my goodness. I didn’t know that you did. That’s so cool. So, for me, I had just moved over to the U.S. I was born in Switzerland, and I grew up in the United Kingdom, in England. And I had moved over to the U.S. And my grandfather, who was in the U.S., is Swiss German. And he had many honey bees, and many, many hives. And so, I started to learn. And they’re fascinating, right? And there’s so much health that we can get from honey. And so, he gifted to me, for my birthday, my first honey bee hive. And I learned and I grew so much with that, Katie. It was unbelievable. And what I would do every year is I would get my honey, and I would make it my Christmas gifts for everybody. So, it was, like, multi-dimensionally beneficial.

Katie: That’s awesome. Yeah, it was an early hobby for me, too. And now it’s fun to see my kids getting into it as well. And I’m very lucky my parents live a few doors down. So, between our two houses, we have ducks, and bees, and all kinds of things.

Naomi: I love it. Oh my gosh. It’s like the greatest gift. I mean, just intellectually, to be able to understand how a hive works. And the royal jelly develops the queen bee, right? Like, how large is she, and how the whole system of bees work. It’s so wonderful. It’s so educational. And there’s so many health-giving properties, between the propolis, the royal jelly, even just honey, you know, like, we can use local honey to help us with allergies, seasonal allergies. So, it’s awesome stuff.

Katie: Yeah, so much to learn from bees, and actually so many uses in, like you mentioned, health and also beauty. Like, I remember even the Egyptians, there’s records of them using honey in beauty treatments. And so there’s a very, very long history of this. And this is actually a perfect segue into another area that you’re knowledgeable about, which is the beauty industry, and especially clean beauty, because I’ve talked about that on this here some, about all of the many not-so-nice things that we find in our beauty products. And certainly we’ve come a long and not necessarily good way since ancient Egypt, when they were using honey, and clay, and natural things. But let’s start broad, and talk about that. Maybe walk us through the number of chemicals that are found in an average beauty routine, and maybe just what a few of the worst offenders are.

Naomi: Sure. So, what I’ll do is I’ll just go back a little bit further, so you can understand sort of why the obsession and intrigue around this area. So, for me, as I mentioned, I was born in Switzerland, and I was born on a biodynamic farm. So, biodynamics are like organic, but next-level. And despite the super-clean lifestyle that I was born into, my father’s a chemist and my mother’s an artist, and they were, like, completely dedicated to my well-being. Despite all of that, I had autoimmune disorders.

And so, I was born with severe eczema, and it covered my entire body. Like, it was so, so bad. I would never wear any clothing that you could see anything, like, other than my hands. Like, you can see right now I’m wearing a turtleneck. But if you were to look at my hands as a little girl, they look like they were 80-year-old hands, and my arms and my legs were covered in this expression of this eczema, so it would, like, bleed, it would pus. It was really, really bad, and very severe. And my mother had me on an anti-inflammatory diet from before I even understood what that meant. And, like, right now, I’m drinking my green juice. I drink it every day. And I’ve done it since I was a little girl, because it’s so important to help to sort of, like, balance out the alkalinity. It’s one of…it is probably my core to my good health that I’m always striving for. But, at that young age, I very quickly learned that skin health had…I could never put anything on the outside of my body, right? I couldn’t…even the clothing had to be natural, natural fibers that could breathe. That’s how severe it was.

So I grew up with a mindset of beauty being an inside job. Like, it was more about what you put into your mouth than what you put on the outside. And that’s how I approach my skin health, and that’s how I approach my hair health and all of that.

So, if you fast forward in my life, I was in my teens, and I was so excited. I was living here in the U.S. and I was getting ready for the spring dance. I was, like, 14 years old, and I had my eyes set on Clovis Chester Young. He was, like, my favorite boy, and I couldn’t wait. And I was expecting he was gonna take me to this dance. But long story long, it was the same time when my mother was like, “Hey, honey, you don’t need to always be covered up. Why don’t you let people see your skin. You have your friends. You know, like, you’re older now and you can be a little bit more confident.” And I listened to her, and Clovis saw my skin. And he didn’t, you know, he didn’t invite me to that dance. And it was this moment of just, like, “Oh my god. We are what people see on the outside. And, like, this is impacting my life.” And I had so much shame and so much anxiety that I sort of went away from my natural ways of doing things, my homeopathy, everything that I had been brought up with. And I said, “I’m just gonna go down the conventional route.”

And I made my mother take me, for the very first time, to a conventional doctor. And I was given steroids and different products that have, like, the big black box of warnings. And all that that did was suppress everything into my body. And if I fast forward to wanting to get pregnant, I’m at my integrative medical doctor’s, and he’s doing all this testing. You know, I’m in my 20s. And he’s looking at, like, is my body in great shape to be able to have a child? And I remember when Dr. Erickson called me back into his office, and he said, “Hey, we need to have a conversation before you embark on this journey.”

And he showed me, from the bloodwork that he had done, and he had done urine testing and all this different stuff, that I had these high levels of heavy metal in my body. And I didn’t know what that heavy metal was from. And ultimately, it was from these Chinese herbs that I had used, I had taken, to help improve the eczema that was in my body, that I had done along with acupuncture. So, these tiny little black pellets that I had been using and ingesting had high levels of heavy metal. So that was, like, this next, huge defining moment. So, I had this moment with Clovis. And then I had this moment with my doctor Erickson, where I realized not everything that we put on our body or in our body is what it seems, and I better figure this out.

So at that moment, I decided, I made this vow to myself that I would always understand where things came from. You know, like you were saying, I have bees, I have ducks. Like, you have your family right next door to you. You have this incredible privilege. Like, if you eat those duck eggs, you know where things are coming from, you know what the soil is like, you understand. And so, with that theme in my heart and in my head, I really became passionate about it. And when I built my last company, Reserveage Nutrition, which I started in 2009, and then I sold it in 2015, everything that I did, I went to the source, and I knew what it was, that I was not just taking myself, but then what I was sharing with other people. So, to answer your question in a really long manner, what I discovered as I was looking to incorporate clean nutrition, that’s science-based, as well as clean beauty for myself, what I discovered is that our most beautiful large organ, our skin, absorbs 60% of what we put on it. And every single one of us, as average women, will put approximately 500 chemicals onto our skin every day.

So if it’s the hair products that are absorbed through our scalp, which obviously is our skin, makeup, if we’re wearing makeup, skin products, lotions, the list goes on and on. So, that’s the average that we’re putting on, and the impact of those chemicals, preservatives, pollutants is starting to be studied. But for somebody like me, who has autoimmune disorders, I don’t have, I would call it the margin to take that kind of toxic load. And I believe that all of us as women, we deserve better. And we deserve more. So that’s a huge area of focus for me in my life at this time.

Katie: Sounds like you went on quite the journey, and learned some amazing lessons that have helped a lot of people along the way. And I very much feel that, because that was some of my story in different areas. But I’m, looking back, very grateful for my health challenges, because they set me on this path that I might not have embarked on otherwise. And I was able to learn so much that hopefully is helping my kids and people listening to this in various ways.

And I think about the connection with what you just said. It reminds me of my own journey learning about oral health. Because, growing up, I was taught, you know, like, it’s just sugar on your teeth that causes cavities. You need to brush your teeth to keep from getting cavities. Nobody ever talked about the internal side of that. And it was just, obviously, only what you do in your mouth is what affects your oral health. And when I got a few cavities while pregnant, and I didn’t wanna fill them while I was pregnant, I started researching, and found things like Dr. Weston A. Price and these doctors talking about, like, “Oh, no. The majority of it is internal. And how we nourish our body affects our oral health, much more than brushing our teeth even, or flossing, while those are great.”

And it was kind of an eye-opener for me to realize for the first time, it really is inside out, not outside in. But yet I feel like so much of the beauty industry is outside-in focused. And you explained so well, in the name of trying to look beautiful, we’re putting all these things on our body that are actually hurting our health and aging us faster, and potentially contributing to all kinds of health problems. And I know you’ve said that a lot of us have what you call malnourished skin. And I’m guessing there’s a connection there, kind of, with the internal side of beauty. But I would love for you to kind of expound on this for us.

Naomi: Well, first of all, like what you were just saying about oral health, and it being from the inside out, you know…and I’m sure you speak to your audience about this, but, like, the mouth is the gateway to our health, right? This is where it all begins, and how important, and I’m so deeply grateful that you’re sharing that message, and that it came through your own process. Like, that’s everything, for all of us. And I wished, you know, in my 20s I knew what it is that you share and the information that you’re spreading. It’s so incredibly powerful. And I think what we’re gonna see, certainly with the microbiome of the mouth, but like what you were saying about it coming from the inside, the nourishment from the inside really being what it’s about, we’re gonna see more and more and more of that over time. So you’re definitely, you know, so far ahead of so many, and it’s just great that you’re bringing that out in the way that you are. Huge, powerful information.

It does. It’s similar to what I was saying about the malnourished skin. So, most of us don’t realize, you know, there are simple nutrients, like minerals, for example. Magnesium is one of my absolute favorite. Ninety percent of us as women, we don’t have enough magnesium in our body, yet magnesium impacts, you know, over 600-plus different reactions in our bodies. And then, certainly, after we’ve had a child, like, how much depletion of different nutrients do we have in our bodies? So, when I got into this idea of, you know, our skin having different levels of nourishment, and understanding that, depending on how much, for example, good fat I was ingesting, would impact the level of moisture, or even hydration in my skin. How does that work?

You know, the first time I ever met Udo Erasmus, he was sort of the grandfather of essential fatty acids. He wrote a book called “Fats that Heal and Fats that Kill.” And I met Udo when he was probably in his 70s, so it was, like, 20-plus years ago. No, he must have been younger. But he was an older gentleman. He had been in this space for a long time, and I just remember, like, shaking hands with him, and I felt like I was touching a baby’s hand. And I was like, “Oh my gosh. How are you so incredibly soft? Like, what is this?” He said, “Naomi, it’s all about the amount of essential fats that I’m consuming every single day. And it’s, if you have dry skin, that means that your organs are dry.” Like, literally, you are dry from the inside out.

And so, that really stuck with me. And when I think about malnourished skin, it means that we’re literally not getting what our body internally needs, and it’s being expressed on the outside. So, that’s what I’m talking about. And, for example, like, on my website, OMI, Outside Meets Inside Nutrition, there’s a whole quiz, because I knew that people wanted to try to, like, understand what does malnourished skin mean. So I put this quiz there, and it’s there if anyone wants to do it, but it’s really this idea, simply, that we’re not getting necessarily the nutrients that we need, and if we can pinpoint what those are, let’s say they’re essential fatty acids. Maybe it’s taking a good multivitamin. It could be magnesium, vitamin D, just a couple of simple things. B complex, for example, that helps us really, truly metabolize our food, and produce that as energy. Simple things make all the difference, and you’ll see it in your skin, when your skin starts to really become nourished. People will be saying to you, “Oh, my gosh. Your skin looks so good. It’s so dewy. What’s going on?”

Katie: I know people are gonna be really curious about that. What are some examples of those essential fats? And how do we know, I’m guessing it’s built into the quiz, but how do we know how much of them we need? I also know probably most people are not getting enough of the right kinds of fats, just knowing the statistics about American fat consumption in general, and most of it coming from vegetable oils. But I would love to hear you explain a little more.

Naomi: Yes. So, the first question about which type of good fats do we need? It’s a great question. So, I became really passionate about fat, really, from a young age, because I knew lipids and essential fats, like, healed my body, and I would put them… I would… I mean, because I grew up in the UK, I grew up drinking a little shot of cod liver oil at breakfast. My mother would always give that to me. But, look, it doesn’t have to be cod liver oil. Essential fats, things like avocados, coconut. You know, there are so many good fats, fats that you can get from different fish. You know, obviously, we know how important DHA is for the brain of our children, as they’re growing in our bodies. And for all the young mothers, like, how important it is to get that DHA to mothers, and to the babies, and to children.

So, my whole attitude about good fats is I’ve never been afraid of fat. I believe, if you’re into a high-fat diet, if you’re into keto, if you’re into none of that, whatever it is, getting good fats into your diet, if it’s through your homemade salad dressings, I don’t care. Just get those good fats in. And that’s why I said, you know, like, olive is, olive oils are great fats. I like to keep them in their more raw state. So, you’re not necessarily cooking with olive oil, because of the smoke point. But coconut oil, if you’re into and you’re comfortable with the taste, I love to cook with coconut oil. I love to have tons of coconut oil in my food.

I find that if we can get rid of the canola or the salad dressings that are not homemade… I mean, it takes, like, two minutes to make a good salad dressing. I grew up making those. I love homemade salad dressings, and I think it’s one of the fastest ways to improve our health, and not being afraid of fat. So, I mean, when I’m eating a high-fat diet, I’m getting about 100 grams of fat a day in my diet, and 30 to 50 carbohydrates. So, when you have a high-fat diet, and you’re burning fat as your primary fuel, it gives you more energy. It also helps you to burn body fat. So it’s kind of like different choices that we can make in our lives around fat, but I always consider it to be the primary macronutrient that I put my attention on. So, you have protein, carbohydrates, and fat. So, just loving fat, and recognizing that fat does not make us fat. Good fat really heals our cells, and nourishes our body. And if you can get the ratios of fat to carbs, fat to protein, it can actually help you to burn body fat.

Katie: Yeah, that makes sense. I think fat got a bad rap, and unfortunately largely due to just bad sourcing, and our initial discussion of, so, fats from poor-quality sources aren’t gonna contribute to your body in the same way as these essential ones that you’re talking about. And you also have a term you use, the “golden triangle of beauty.” And I would love if you could explain this to the audience, and just kind of expound on what that means.

Naomi: So, I’m an entrepreneur. And I always have been. I mean, since I moved to the U.S. when I was 12, as I mentioned, I didn’t know what the word “entrepreneur” was, but I just remember I got out of the car in New York City. My grandfather was a quantum physicist, mathematician, and he was teaching at Columbia University in New York. I got out of the car, and I was like, “Oh, my god. Everything is so big here. Like, the streets are so big, the buildings. Everything’s huge.” And I wanted to build things. Like, I wanted to make things. And I didn’t know that I would be an innovator, and I would basically sort of take what I loved, which was bringing things from different parts of the world here to the U.S., right?

So, growing up in Europe, when I first moved to the U.S., in England, we used to make these little friendship bracelets. And these bracelets were something that was a trend in the UK. And so, when I first got to the U.S., I didn’t have any friends. You know, I was alone, and I had just gotten here, and I had a thick accent. And I dressed totally differently, and I didn’t match the rest of the cool kids here. And as I was trying to build friendships, I thought, “Well, nobody’s making these friendship bracelets. Why don’t I do what I did in England, and bring it over here?”

And so that’s how I started to build my friendships. And it was really exciting. And so, with my last company, I brought collagen as a beauty ingestible into the U.S. market, not because I invented it, but because it was used so readily throughout Asia. And I saw how all the Asian women were drinking so much bone broth, they were taking collagen powders and supplements. And I was like, “Oh, my gosh. American women deserve this.” And our diet doesn’t give us collagen, because we’re not eating skin. Everything’s boneless, skinless, low fat.

So with the golden triangle, what the golden triangle means to me is two things. Number one, if you think about an upside-down triangle, like, the shape of our face, right? So, your forehead is sort of the base of the triangle, and your chin is the point of the triangle. And that is considered to be sort of the essence of beauty for women, as we are younger. So, if you look at your daughter’s face, you know, there’s more and more of that. As we start to age, that triangle turns the other way. So, the base becomes more like the jowl, like, we become more jowly, you know, we get thicker on the bottom of our face. And that’s just part of the aging process. So, I like to use that as a symbol of health and beauty, right?

So, beauty is only, in my mind, an expression of what’s going on on the inside. I consider, when we’re healthy, it literally unlocks our inner beauty. And that inner beauty is expressed on the outside through radiance, through, you know, beautiful hair, glowing skin. And so, that golden triangle is able to be maintained for a longer period of time than it would be if we were less healthy.

So, the golden triangle doesn’t just mean the sign of healthy beauty, which I like to call “well beauty.” So, whenever you think of me, you know, think of this idea of our wellness exudes our beauty, and everything we have is within our bodies.

The other thing I would say about the golden triangle is I also think about it as these beauty proteins. So, everybody that’s listening knows about collagen. Probably most of us take collagen. You know, if it’s in our coffee, whatever it may be. It’s a super-abundant protein. There are two other really important beauty proteins. One of them is keratin, and that makes up 97% of our hair. It makes up the outermost layer of our skin. And it’s so essential to our bodies. And I wanna talk more about that to you. But I would also tell you, there’s this another incredible beauty protein, and that is elastin. That’s the most rare of all the proteins, and it makes up the elasticity of our skin. It’s a protein that’s very popular right now in Korea. We know, like, the beauty trend really starts in Korea. And you haven’t seen it here yet. You’re gonna see more and more of it. You can find it in certain foods. I have recipes that I can share with you and your audience for all of these beauty proteins, like meals that you can make simply at home, that bring these beauty proteins in. But whenever I think of the golden triangle, I think of that inner beauty coming outward. It’s the expression of our facial beauty. And it’s also, I think of these three points of the triangle as each of these beauty proteins, collagen, keratin, and elastin.

Katie: Yeah, you’re right. I think collagen has definitely hit the mainstream more in the U.S. And the others are not as talked about yet. But that’s exciting that we’ll be hearing more about them. And you also coined a term…hopefully I don’t butcher it, but “power phenols.” Is that the right term?

Naomi: Yeah.

Katie: And apparently these come into play too. I think of a lot of aspects of health as almost like a puzzle, and needing all the pieces in a complementary way. So, explain what power phenols are.

Naomi: So, power phenols, when I wrote my book, my first book, “Glow15” in 2018, I coined this term, “power phenols.” And basically, it’s all about sort of simplifying and easing ourselves into our best health. Like, I’m a mother of four, you’re a mother of six. Like, we are mothers, and we don’t have the time. I mean, we all know. We just don’t have the time and the energy to go down all these rabbit holes for our good health. So, power phenols are essentially the most important nutrients, that do the most for our bodies. So we get the biggest bang out of the buck. So, things like turmeric. Things… So, like, you can cook with turmeric. You can take a curcumin nutritional supplement. It does so much for our body. It’s the primary spice that’s used throughout India every single day, in the cooking. And there’s a reason, because it does so much for our health, so much as an anti-inflammatory. It activates the youth inside of our cells, and more and more and more. So, that’s one.

Another one is green tea. So, if it’s drinking a couple of cups of green tea every day, and getting the EGCgs, that’s considered another power phenol. And it does so much for our health. It’s something like resveratrol, which is found in a good glass of red wine. So, if you’re drinking a glass of red wine, that’s great. It’s really, those three are really important. There obviously are, you know, so many different things that activate youth in our cells, that activate these anti-inflammatory properties. But I think, you know, if people are thinking about those three… There’s another one that I’m really passionate about. It’s called citrus bergamot. It grows in Calabria, Italy, which is the southern part of Italy. And you can get citrus bergamot in your Earl Grey tea, if you’re gonna drink Earl Grey tea. Obviously, I’m a big believer in taking it as a supplement. And it’s so powerfully good for our cardiovascular health, our heart health. You know, it’s not necessarily something that we as women are thinking about in our 20s, 30s, and 40s. But it’s the number one thing that we should always be thinking about if we’re truly thinking about our self-care, and the quality of our well-being, you know, our heart’s beating for us, it beats 24/7. And as we get older, it’s the number one contributor to, you know, our poor health, and it’s just something to really take care of. So, those are power phenols.

Katie: And I know you’ve written extensively about all these things, too. I’ll make sure that your website and your books are linked in the show notes, for you guys listening on the go. They’ll be at wellnessmama.fm.

 

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And a few more questions I wanted to make sure we get time to touch on. The first being, you’ve said before that seven and a half hours of sleep is better than eight, and I would love for you to explain why.

Naomi: I just thought this would be something that would be fun for everybody to hear. You know, we have, every single cell in our body has, like, a little clock, if you can imagine. And that’s part of our circadian rhythm. So, understanding your sleep cycles. Like, you know, in my book, “Glow15,” I have a little quiz that helps you to understand, like, what type of sleeper am I? And I partnered with Dr. Michael Breus, he’s considered America’s sleep doctor, I’m sure you know him, really, to help me with this chapter. Because I felt like it was so important for us as women to understand, like, what is the right amount of sleep that we need. And what I discovered in that process, I had always been thinking, “I need eight hours. I need eight hours.” That’s, like, my perfect thing. And by the way, I think sleep is the number one key to our well-being, like, without a doubt. And so, good sleep hygiene is simple, but it’s got to be followed.

And, for me, when I learned that a full sleep cycle was an hour and a half, that seven and a half hours actually was physically better for me than eight, I was like, “Oh, my gosh. This is the best news ever. I get another half an hour.” And that’s what this means. So, anyone that’s listening, figure out what your sleep cycle is, get some great sleep hygiene. And then, when you have more energy and you look your best, then you’re feeling good, and you’re like, “Hey, it was that woman Naomi Whittel that reminded me…” It’s sort of like bio-hacking, you know what I mean? There’s so many great male bio-hackers out there. But as a mother, a mother of four, as an entrepreneur, you know, we’re working as women, studies show that we’re working more than ever, we’re raising our children, we do approximately nine hours of house care every single week. And it’s imbalanced, naturally. So, as much as we can hack our own biology, I think the better off we are.

Katie: Yeah, I was fascinated when I learned that about the sleep cycles, too. And if you actually do it, you really do notice a difference in your energy levels. And obviously, if it’s within your ability, depending on the age of your kids, nine hours is also another good… Like, six would be the minimum, hopefully you’re getting seven and a half. But if you have the ability, go to nine. And just, and it’s, I always try to set my alarm for 90-minute cycles of whatever multiple after I’m going to sleep, and a big fan of using, like, Oura Ring to track that, and you see improvement in your sleep rhythms when you pay attention to that.

Naomi: Awesome.

Katie: Another thing that I think that it’ll be really important to get into with you today and make sure we get to have a conversation about is, I read that you threw the scale away five years ago, and that you’re focusing on muscle-to-fat ratios instead. And I would love to go deep on this with you, because I’ve been on a similar journey, and realized that I needed to kind of end my relationship with the scale for now, and focus on muscle mass instead. But I’m curious what led to that journey for you, and how you integrate that in your life.

Naomi: Oh, my gosh. So, we could do, like, literally an entire segment on, like, a whole show on this, because it is that important for us as women. But if I’m gonna give you a couple of quick highlights, as I was understanding and starting to learn about metabolism, right? So, like I said, this is a whole dialogue. But what we think about our metabolism and how it works and what it means is so far off from reality. So, I wrote an entire book, really, on metabolic health. It’s called “High Fiber Keto,” but it’s truly, truly about our metabolism. And I worked with all of the world’s top experts to try to understand what metabolism meant. And through that journey of these interviews, I think I interviewed, like, 80-plus experts, I would tell you that the ratio of our lean muscle to body fat is really what we need to be talking about. And it’s why I threw away the scale, because it’s got nothing to do with the number of pounds that are on our frame, and it has everything to do with the quality of the muscle that’s on our body, and also the quality of the fat.

So, we have white fat and we have brown fat. And brown fat is, like, the golden chalice of health. And brown fat helps us to metabolize, and it’s the smart fat that’s in our body, and we have very small levels of it in our body. So, increasing brown fat is a key, but really learning how to work with your body to increase the amount of powerful lean muscle. So, it’s the amount of protein that you’re getting. You know, for your audience that’s over 40, or in their late 30s, you essentially have to double the amount of protein that you’ve been consuming up to this point. And so there’s all of these things that start to change, that change in our 20s, once we’ve had children, and then in our early 40s, and it has to do with really focusing on the amount of lean muscle to body fat ratio.

So, having 20% to 25% body fat is awesome for women. And there are some women that can go lower, but that would be a woman who’s an athlete, and who’s looking for something else. And all of the research is showing this to us now. So, focusing on those numbers, and understanding that there’s a huge amount of our population that’s what’s called “skinny fat.” So, what we look like on the outside has very little to do with what’s really going on with the metabolic health on the inside. I went to Cameroon, West Africa, a year ago, November, because I was learning about this ingredient called spice fruit. And spice fruit is something that’s consumed every day in Cameroon, and I was working with the PhDs that have been studying metabolic health for, like, 35 years. And despite what people looked like on the outside, they were metabolically fit, like, ridiculously healthy.

And so that’s how I really got into this whole idea of, “Oh, my gosh. It’s all about this ratio.” So, another time, like, I can go really deep, and I can give you tons and tons and tons of data. And I just think it’s so important for us as women to have enough confidence, and that confidence is gonna come through data, to understand that, yes, you can throw away your scale, and here’s why. And here’s how you’re gonna get into your most beautiful health, body, energy, well-being, quality of life, impact on your children’s lives, and really live that best life.

Katie: Yeah, and that’s been a common theme I’ve loved in this episode so far, is that focus on nourishing the body, and getting stronger, not just getting smaller, and providing the body with the right building blocks it needs, not depriving, which is so common in diet culture. And it’s really encouraging to see that it seems like a lot of American women are starting to shift that paradigm, and care more about being strong, and about nourishing their bodies, and about doing the inner work, the mental-emotional work, to get to a point of being able to love their own bodies, which is a big factor for a lot of women. And I think you have such amazing work in all of these areas. Like I said, I’ll link to it in the show notes, so people can keep learning from you. But a few more questions I wanna make sure we have time for, the first being are there any other things related to your area of work or research that people either don’t know or often misunderstand?

Naomi: Yes, and something that I’m so passionate about right now. And I think it’s just so, so good for your audience at this time. And that is what I’m really focusing on, and I’m going to be going to New Zealand, which is where this comes from, this amazing hair molecule. So, I talked to you about the golden triangle, I spoke to you about keratin. But in New Zealand, over the past 22 years, there’s been all of this research around the power of this hair molecule. So, you know, for us, when we have a baby, we know how much hair we lose, right? And hair is such a big…it’s such an expression of our health. And it’s so important for our confidence, right?

So, I started to really dig into this about eight years ago. And what I’ve discovered is that we have about 100,000 hair follicles on our head. And after we have a baby, and when we get into our 40s, we start to what’s called excessively shed. So, we start to lose more than, let’s say, the 50 to 150 hairs that we would typically lose on a daily basis. And a lot of it has to do with our health and the health of our scalp, or the hormonal changes. So, I’m on a mission to help all of us have our most beautiful hair, and our most healthy hair, and it has everything to do with this powerful molecule that I’m bringing back from New Zealand into the market.

So, I would just say that our hair is an expression of clean beauty. It’s an expression of good health. I actually put together a whole bunch of recipes for your audience, that you can find on OMI, which, again, it stands for Outside Meets Inside, but omibook.com, I put a whole recipe book together of these hair recipes that are delicious. Like, I have this banana bread smoothie that I can’t wait for you guys to try, but so many different recipes. And these beauty proteins are just, like, where I really see our health going, and a lot of the trend going, like we were talking about with collagen. So I just wanted to, more than anything, sort of share that. And I would tell you that you can also find those products, those nutritional products, at my partner. I have a strategic partnership with Sprouts Farmers Market. I love Sprouts. I feel like it’s a great way to get healthy products, like, at a, you know, a better price point, and I’ve really loved partnering, to sort of bring these kinds of things into the market through them.

So, I think, more than anything, for all of your audience to understand that we each have within our bodies exactly what we need. And what we have to do is simply activate it. You know, my first book, “Glow15,” is all about something called autophagy. Autophagy means auto, self, phagy, to eat. And when we activate that self-eating process, which we do with power phenols, we do with those things, the proteins in the golden triangle that I’ve spoken to you about. We do it with all different foods, we do it with self-love, we do it with different exercises. As we activate our own autophagy, we’re literally giving our body everything that we need. And it’s for free. And it’s just us activating what’s naturally there. So that would be the point that I would love to leave everybody with.

Katie: I will make sure those links are included as well. And then, lastly, what book or number of books have had a profound influence on your life, and why?

Naomi: Oh, thank you so much for that question. I think, for me, my favorite books are really from the Dalai Lama. I feel that the Dalai Lama, his books on compassion, his books on interconnectedness, are fundamental, not just for us, but also for that of our children. So, his books on loving kindness, I use those principles with my children all the time. I feel like if we can bring more of the compassion into our own lives, self-compassion, loving kindness, they’re core.

So, anything that the Dalai Lama writes around compassion. The Dalai Lama also says that the Western woman will heal the world. And I fundamentally agree with him on that point. You know, we as women, here in the U.S., are in such a privileged state. And we have such the capacity to help our sisters, and be supportive of one another. And so I think those principles that you find in the Dalai Lama’s books are core. And I keep them by my bedside. I read them all the time.

Katie: I love that. And finally, if there’s any parting advice you have for the listeners today, that could be related to what we’ve talked about or entirely unrelated?

Naomi: Aww. Such a great question. No, I would just say, for the audience, you know, there are so many ways that we can… I like to think of it as bio-optimized, like, bio-optimize our bodies, if it’s drinking a glass of 16 ounces of ice cold water first thing in the morning, to get that metabolism going. If it’s throwing the scale away, if it’s getting enough essential fats into our bodies, just thinking about your body as, you know, this beautiful, most powerful vessel, that you get to possess, and really looking at self-care as sacred, those would sort of be the last things that are related and not related.

Katie: Perfect. I think that’s a perfect place to wrap up for today. And I know this has been such a fun conversation for me. We’ve gotten to go deep on some really fun topics that I think are very relevant to the audience. And I know you’re a very busy mom and entrepreneur as well, so thank you so much for your time, and for sharing today.

Naomi: Thank you so much for having me, Katie.

Katie: And thanks as always to all of you for sharing your most valuable assets, 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.