829: Lessons in Health From Indigenous Populations Around the World With Hilda Gore

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Lessons in Health from Indigenous Populations Around the World with Hilda Gore
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829: Lessons in Health From Indigenous Populations Around the World With Hilda Gore
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Today’s episode is all about health lessons we can learn from indigenous populations around the world. My guest is Hilda Gore, a certified health coach, who’s known as Holistic Hilda. She’s traveled extensively, exploring Mongolia, Peru, Ethiopia, Ecuador, Kenya, Australia, and many more places, with the objective of learning about traditional practices to improve the energy and vitality of humanity.

We go deep into the lessons she learned from these incredible people she’s visited all over the world, and the takeaways we can implement into our modern lives. She shares the importance of community and how we can build in-person communities, how online communities don’t offer the same benefits as in-person, what the happiest people have in common, and how to build a gratitude practice.

I really enjoyed learning from Hilda’s experiences all over the world. I hope you enjoy this episode too!

Episode Highlights With Hilda Gore

  • Her amazing experiences with visiting and studying indigenous populations around the world
  • How Dr. Weston A. Price inspired her work and her experiences
  • Why technological community can’t replace the importance of in-person community 
  • The happiest people she’s met around the world and the surprising things they had in common
  • Stories from her trips to Cuba, Peru, and Ethiopia and how these experiences shifted her life
  • The recurring theme of gratitude in these beautiful people around the world
  • Loneliness is worse than smoking, but how to build a community 
  • What she learned from the Maasai tribe 

Resources We Mention

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Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com, and this conversation is all about lessons in health from indigenous populations around the world. And I’m here with Hilda Gore, who is well-versed in this. She’s known as Holistic Hilda online, and she’s a certified health coach who is known as a kind of Dora the Explorer 2.0. She’s traveled extensively exploring Mongolia, Peru, Ethiopia, Ecuador, Kenya, Australia and many more, with the objective of learning about traditional practices to improve the energy and vitality of humanity. And that is what we delved into in this episode, the lessons she learned from these incredible people she got to visit all over the world, and the takeaways that we can all implement into our modern lives. So let’s join her now. Hilda, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

Hilda: Oh my gosh, it’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Katie: Well, I am so excited for today’s topic because we are going to talk about health lessons from indigenous populations around the world, which is something you have deep experience with and I have almost no experience with. So I get to completely be in the curiosity learning seat today, which I’m super excited about. But I have had this inkling for years. You know, people talk about the blue zones and want to quote the statistics and talk about what their exact diet was or how much in ounces of wine did they drink or all these factors. And I’ve just always had this feeling that it was probably something deeper than that. And I always kind of intuitively pointed to the fact that, yeah, they did all these things, but they seemingly did it in strong community and in ways that we perhaps have moved away from in the modern world. And again, that’s just my intuitive feeling around it. I’m guessing you have much more data about what’s actually going on, not just in blue zones, but in indigenous places where we’ve perhaps lost some of this wisdom in our modern lifestyle. So I know this is a huge topic and you could probably do a dozen TED Talks just on this alone. But maybe kind of as a broad introduction, just kind of walk us into your background and study and experience with these indigenous peoples. And then we’ll get to delve into all the things you learned.

Hilda: Absolutely. Your intuition is spot on. Let me just start with that, Katie, because I have been in numerous countries around the world seeking out indigenous peoples to learn from their wisdom, those who are willing to share it. I’m not like barging in. I make connections ahead of time and see who is open to doing so. And one community I was with in Ecuador, I want to tell you this story real quick before I tell you more about me. They told me that during COVID, like a lot of people in their community got sick because they have this tradition of getting together and doing this Inti Raymi festival, which is almost like a Thanksgiving in a way, festival where they get together and they dance for days on end. The men have certain days where they dance and the women have other days. And they say, it’s kind of a thank you to mother earth and to the sun and to God for all the goodness that they’ve received. And the woman said to me, a lot of us got sick during COVID. And she said, what we did was we gathered up 20 medicinal plants and herbs and we took them to each household that was affected by COVID. And she said to me, no one was hospitalized and no one died. And I was like, whoa, mind blown. And of course, the first thing I wanted to do, Katie, was get the list of medicinal herbs and plants. But when I couldn’t do that, it also occurred to me, maybe it wasn’t so much the plants that helped the people heal as the sense and the context in which they were given, which was a context of love and support of community. It’s like family among the Kichwa people that I’ve met in Ecuador.

And so you’re right. I think in this day and age, we have to be intentional because our homes are all separate. We can be so isolated. So we do have to seek it out. And it’s really important. And that’s one reason I’m glad our paths have crossed, because we are a community of people seeking ways to boost people’s health. So I’m all about this. How did I get into all this? It’s a very long story that kind of started before I was born. So I don’t need to necessarily get into that. But I just I was born with a birth defect. And I was very interested in making sure that my body could be strong and resilient for as long as possible. And so I started out in the health and fitness field. And then later I got into nutrition and all the things. And basically, I was very inspired by Dr. Weston A. Price. And that’s when I started the podcast for this foundation that I’m associated with. And that’s when I started traveling the world myself, seeing what indigenous people groups are still around and what traditions are they still holding on to that can serve all of us today.

Katie: That’s incredible. And especially I love that you tied in the community aspect with a COVID story, because how different is that than the experience many of us had of like isolation and neighbors being fearful of each other and that lack of in-person community for some people months or even a year or more. And just how different that must have felt and how that I know we hear the statistics that like loneliness is worse than smoking, but I don’t know if we internalize that or feel how different community feels now than it even did a couple of decades ago for those of us in the technological modern world.

And when you talk about community, there’s that often quoted phrase from the movie about if you build it, they will come. And I think we’re at a time in human history where truly, if we don’t build it, it won’t happen. We have the ability to be technologically connected, but actually isolated at the same time. And this is something I’ve honed in on for years of just the importance of community and realizing, like you said, how intentional we have to be about creating it. It’s not a natural byproduct of living in a society necessarily anymore. It’s something we have to intentionally create. So I love that we got to start the conversation there. And you mentioned you’ve traveled all over and studied so many different communities. Can you kind of just share some of the places you’ve been and what those experiences were like?

Hilda: Wow. It’s, it’s a lot. But I do, I want to just segue way a little bit more on the community thing, because sometimes we think, okay, we can find it electronically. And yes, tech has its place, right? That’s one way we’ve connected. And actually, of course, we’ve gotten to see each other in person, which is amazing. But it’s no substitute for the energy that we can exchange when we’re together in person. And so I want to just say a word of caution to all the moms. I know a lot of moms listen to your show. We might be so desperate to find community that we think it can be found in a device. And what happens is those things can be time- and soul-sucking, I would say, and distracting us from the very community that’s right around us in person. Our literal neighbors, our small children looking to us for something. And we’re like, hold on one second. Let me just scroll a little bit more or whatever it is. So I always say, Katie, more is caught than taught. So instead of tearing our hair out because our kids are on screens more than we would like, let’s set the example. And when we do that, I know you understand this as a mom of six. When we do that, it is transformative for the mood in our household and for how we even feel about ourselves. And we can find joy and energy and so much more from the in-person connections, I believe.

Katie: Yes. Oh my gosh. I fully agree with you. And one decision I made years ago, I came from a journalism background. So I was typically very well-versed with the news of the world and I kept a pulse on that. And I realized at some point, and I think I read some articles that pointed at this as well, is like, we’re wired as humans to pay attention to danger. And when we’re reading the news and getting these signals of danger from all over the world, our bodies, our nervous systems don’t actually know the difference between that and that thing happening in our immediate environment. And I realized I can’t, from where I am right now, taking care of six kids at home, I can’t go, unfortunately, change what’s happening in other parts of the world. I can obviously love those people and care for them and hope that things improve, but I don’t have the ability to change that in a tangible way.

But what I do have the ability to do is to change what is in my proximity, certainly starting with my family and then my immediate community. And I can, if I focus my energy there, hopefully affect change that actually improves people’s lives in a tangible way. And so I made the decision years ago to really stop checking the news or paying attention to it outside of my immediate area, where I could actually affect a positive change. And I know that can sound extreme to some people, but I was amazed how much of a positive mental shift that was and how much calmer I felt. And it helped me to have that time and energy, to your point, to really focus on my immediate community and the people right in front of me.

Hilda: Yes, the happiest people I’ve met around the world, literally who’s coming to mind right now is a Cuban farmer. And Cuba is a nation under a lot of oppression and scarcity. It has been ever since Castro took power years ago, and not to get too political, but just my dad is from Cuba. So it’s often on my heart and I’ve been there. So I’ve seen the scarcity and the issues that go on there. And this man was so happy in part, Katie, because he was productive in his own backyard. He had a little farm. He was like, you know what? If the electricity goes out, I’ve got this manure situation set up so that the manure is used to create the energy and generate it through this generator system. Like it was amazing. He served me a breakfast of all the foods from his very farm. And there were berries and they were like pancakes from some of the grains that they had. I mean, it was just mind-blowing. And he was so happy.

And so to answer your original question about the travels I’ve taken, I went to Peru, for example, in 2017 with a friend of mine, Katita Williamson. And she just had it on her heart. Like, let’s go there. Let’s both explore indigenous wisdom and then share what we know about healthy living. And the biggest contrast struck me when we were in these mountains outside of Huaraz, I think it was. And I saw these beautiful, happy children with round faces and reddy cheeks, not from eczema or acne, but because they were spending plenty of time in the sun. They just looked healthy and happy. They were connected with the land. And then I couldn’t help but contrast them with the university students in the capital of Lima. And they looked so pale and hunched over. And I thought, wow, look at this. These young people are learning in the University about maybe even about health for all I know, but they look weak in comparison to these young children who are still living close to the land and getting plenty of sunshine. So that was one thing that really made an impression on me.

And it was interesting because the children’s objective, or at least their parents’ objective is let’s get these kids educated, even these little farm kids up in the mountains and send them away to school. And I told them in Spanish and not Quechua because I didn’t know that language, but I said, you have a treasure right here. And I wanted them to realize that the life they were living was so wholesome and healthy that it was doing their bodies and their spirits good.

Katie: Oh, I love that. And I got the chance to visit Cuba actually as well under the journalism capacity and felt the same thing. Because you hear these stories of what life must be like in Cuba and meeting the people there, it was such a drastic contrast to that. And I just was so struck by how vibrant and wonderful and friendly. And even though they didn’t have what we would consider a lot of resources in the US, they were so generous and so kind and so welcoming. And that just really struck me. And I think that there are lessons learned from exposure to other parts of the world and to other ways of living that can’t be gained from, to your point, education or from a textbook or from reading about it. It’s like the difference between reading about the Himalayas and hiking them. There’s almost no comparison.

I also love that you tied in sunshine because I think this is something I’ve said before on this podcast, but I feel like the conventional health recommendation is so contrary to our human nature and how we, you know, everything in nature from plants to animals follows the sun and lives by the rhythms of the sun and knows the importance of getting the right amount of light and sun. And humans are the only ones that have the ability to slather on sunscreen and stay indoors and avoid natural light and completely live out of alignment with the natural rhythms of light and our planet. And so I love that you got to see that contrast firsthand as well.

So I know you visited many, many places. I would love if we could start to walk through maybe some of what were transformative experiences for you or things that you changed in your life as a result of experiencing those other places and those wonderful other people, because I would guess there are things like that, that even though coming from a health background and knowing so much about health, probably the experience of that shifted things for you in a way that reading a book about it never could have.

Hilda: Yes, that’s really true. I guess I have to say everywhere I’ve gone has changed me in some way, shape, or form. If you don’t mind, I’d like to tell a rather poignant story from my trip to Ethiopia this last summer. I think it’s related less to physical health than maybe our spiritual, mental, and emotional health. So I went to see a tribe that actually has the custom of decorative scarring on their bodies, which it can sound unusual unless you stop and think that people in the US will do tattoos and earrings and all the things. But so I was with this one tribe, this Daasanach tribe, and this woman had a pattern of scars on her back. They look like, you know, bumps and dots. And I told her, I said, you know, that’s beautiful. And then, Katie, she turned to me and she said, your scar is beautiful. I was shocked because I have this huge scar on my chest. As I told you, I was born with a birth defect and it was a hole in my heart between the lower two ventricles. It was corrected by open heart surgery when I was nine. And I don’t think anyone in my entire life had ever told me that my scar was beautiful.

And so I just want to encourage the moms out there, maybe even the kids who feel like they have some kind of birthmark or disfigurement that is unappealing, that what if it’s actually kind of like a battle scar? What if it actually tells part of your story in a beautiful way? And what if we saw our flaws as something that make us unique and stand out? I really felt something change for me when she said that. And I was like, oh, thank you, sometimes we look back and we think, oh, I hated that job or that situation. Even our emotional scars have something to teach us. And so I don’t know exactly why this culture, sometimes I start to get to know a culture when I visit it and then have to do further research. I actually don’t know why this particular tribe does the scarification. I think at least from some of the tribes I visited and study, they do it to be more attractive to a potential partner.

When I was with the Mursi, I met the lip plated women and they literally do things starting in adolescence to extend their lips artificially, which reminds me of fillers in our culture. But anyway, they do this because the larger the lip, the further out it goes, the more attractive they are and the more likely they are to find a potential mate. So perhaps they do it for that. I can’t really say. But what I do know is they endure pain in going through the process and they do it with a purpose in mind and they also see the beauty of it and in it. And I think sometimes we have scars. It could be anything from varicose veins, I have a friend recently who’s in her 30s and she’s like, oh, my veins. I was like, do not worry. Because there is something beautiful and something that it’s teaching you, if only humility, right?

Katie: Oh, that’s such a good point. That’s such a good reframe. And like you said, even emotional scars, I think it’s hard to remember in the moment that feels difficult, but often easier to see with the perspective of time. But I think back to the things that in the moment in my life seemed almost impossible or insurmountable or so difficult. And I can look back now and realize those quote-unquote bad things actually were some of the best things because they led to such incredible transformation or growth in my life that I wouldn’t have potentially experienced otherwise. So one of my quests in life is to learn to shorten that time and eventually maybe in this life to learn to feel the gratitude in the moment of the hard things, not to have to wait till I see the beauty of it play out, but to find gratitude in the moment. And it seems like, oh, go ahead.

Hilda: That really resonates with me as well, because I have a gratitude journal. So since we’re talking of things to the spirit, I think later we’ll touch on the six ancestral secrets that I like to focus on in terms of the lessons I’ve learned from different people groups. But one thing they do offer is gratitude. I told you about the Inti Raymi Festival. I’ve also been among the Maasai. And these people don’t always have a lot of resources, Katie, but they offer thanks for what they do have, and they share it generously, as you pointed out. So what I have is a gratitude journal. And every morning, basically, I write just a few things I’m thankful for, not generalities like, oh, my family, friends and food, which I do love, of course, but I try to get specific.

And sometimes, I write in there painful things. I have a niece recently who lost a child, a baby. I can’t think of anything worse for a mom to lose a little one, to have her being born without ever having to gotten to see her smile or cry or any of the things. Very painful. And I, by faith, wrote it in my journal because I thought, okay, I know that there is a greater purpose in this life and that my niece was a mom caring for this little one for nine months in the womb, you know, so it wasn’t wasted. But it’s hard in the moment to be thankful for something that’s painful. And so I make a practice of that.

And sometimes I put a question mark by it because I’m like, how can I be thankful for this thing? Let’s say I lost a job or whatever it could be, right? It doesn’t seem good in the moment, but somehow I do believe that life is a little bit like a tapestry and God and the universe, if you want to think of it that way, sees the beautiful weaving on the top and how the patterns are all coming together and how maybe this is preparation for something else down the line for any of us. And we see all the dangling threads that are not looking very pretty. And it’s so unclear, especially in the moment.

So I’m doing the same thing as you. I’m growing in this gratitude because it is something that I’ve seen in people groups around the world. And I think it’s something we can benefit from because as you were talking earlier about the studies that show that loneliness is as bad as cigarette smoking, it is true that when we offer gratitude, even if we don’t know to who, there may be people listening right now or a person who’s like, I don’t even know if I believe in God. That’s okay. You can still start a gratitude journal. You can start that practice because what it does is it rewires your brain, and it makes you more open to good things happening. And it opens your sensibilities, if you will. And it kind of makes new neural pathways that lead to greater happiness and contentment.

Katie: I love that. And you mentioned the Maasai, and I see them mentioned in health literature quite a lot. And people use them as examples in health outcomes. But I would love to hear an in-person just kind of recount of what they actually were like when you got to visit them and interact with them.

Hilda: Oh, it was beautiful. And what happened was this. Katie, a Maasai warrior from the village near Oiti, near the border of Tanzania and Kenya, he called the Weston A. Price Foundation. He said, please send someone over. We’re all getting sick. Now, this is the Maasai tribe, as you said, often regarded as hale and hardy, tall and lean and lanky and strong who are nomadic in nature. And so why was he calling us? He said, I have diabetes. My wife has asthma. He had begun to see the physical degeneration of his family and his people group as they started to eat more what I call and what Dr. Price calls the displacing foods of modern commerce. In other words, they were starting to eat more refined flour foods and processed foods and cakes.

And I’ll never forget sitting in Dickson, is the name of this warrior, Dickson Ole Gisa. I was sitting in his home and he had his aunt over. She was wearing the Maasai, beautiful traditional clothing with the dangling beaded earrings and necklaces and colorful capes and dresses. Like it was amazing. In one hand, she had a chai tea laden with sugar. And the other hand, she had a white bread jelly sandwich. I was like, what is happening here?

So I also saw with my own eyes how these people were holding on to some of their traditions, but departing from others. Now, while I was there, I will say I saw them slaughter a young goat. Literally a little boy put his hand over the goat’s mouth and nostrils and suffocated it. I was like, what is happening? But they were doing it, I think in part to share its meat and its life and its food with me and the others who were visiting. So they slaughtered the goat. They did drink the blood. So they were still keeping some of their traditions. I didn’t get any blood because I didn’t know they won’t offer it, they won’t offer it to Westerners unless we ask. Next time I’ll ask if I dare.

But so they also were sitting around a fire and roasting its entrails and making stews and so forth. So I witnessed with my own eyes what Dickson was talking about. And so when I went there, I went to share about how good it is to return to ancestral ways of eating more whole real foods. And, you know, we hear this over and over again, of course, avoid processed foods, but we just don’t realize how we’re sacrificing our health on the altar of convenience. And here it was happening in this remote village and actually all over Africa. I’ve seen little stands where they sell fresh produce and such, and they’ll be painted with the Coca-Cola logo because Coca-Cola has seen their market share go down in the US. And what they’ve done is they put Africa in the crosshairs. They’re like, okay, we are targeting our marketing there and we are going to tell people we will paint your little stand in exchange for letting us paint our logo. And so these people are like, okay, sure, not realizing that it’s contributing to the degradation of the health of the people. And so it was really astounding.

But the best news I have to tell you is at the end of my visit and this was in 2015, the pastor got up because there was a small church in the community. And he says, starting today, the women will cook our traditional foods. And I was like, oh, no, are they going to be mad at me because they had made some shifts to this modern way of eating and living? But I realized later, oh, they make their decisions by consensus. And they had gotten together and decided this is what we want to do. And I returned a year later, and they had already made some shifts. And it’s giving me chills, even as I’m telling you, because, again, as we were saying, people without many resources have found a way to nourish themselves well. You just do the best you can. Yes, I’m big on organic food from regenerative farms and, you know, all the things, but just do the best you can within your budget, mama, because I think that is the way that you can nourish your family’s best.

And of course, serve them with love. And I eat less and less out even to celebrate big occasions because I want to have my control over the ingredients for me and my family, right? So you do the best you can. And it is a beautiful thing because it will nourish you well and actually give you health for the long haul and for your children as well, which is what, of course, what we’re all looking for.

Katie: Absolutely. And as part of my own journey into the world of health, coming from a background in journalism, I came across pretty early Dr. Weston A. Price’s work. And I read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. And then I read Deep Nutrition by Cate Shanahan. And these were new concepts for me at the time. I had never been introduced, really shockingly, to the idea that food impacted us beyond the calories or the macros or if we gained weight or not, but the deep way that that communicates within our body. And like my friend JJ says, our body is not a bank account. It’s a chemistry lab. And there’s so much more beyond the calories. So I know this could be its own whole topic. But can you just briefly talk about, I know we’re going to do the six ancestral secrets but talk about the work of Weston A. Price and what he found related to these more nutritious ancestral foods that truly humans have eaten throughout our history, and that we have the ability to not eat now.

Hilda: Wait, I want to go back to something you said. She said our bodies are not what?

Katie: A bank account, their chemistry lab. So it’s not just about the calories.

Hilda: I love that, right? Because we think, oh, we can just get this in and let me do the data and check it out. But I would actually say, not only are we not a bank account or a chemistry lab, we are, there’s even more to us than fits into the body. You know how some people say we’re not just physical beings having a spiritual experience. We’re spiritual beings having a physical experience. I’ve thought about this a lot, Katie, because I sense people’s energy more and more as I have encounters with them. And I realize, oh, their energy goes beyond and can’t even be encapsulated in their body. And for anybody who’s ever taken a picture with a friend and then looked at it and thought, wait a minute, that looks horrible. I do not look at, please delete that. This is why I think they think that, because that photo can’t possibly capture the complexity and the beauty of you.

So I really want to encourage people to know that, yes, we need to nourish the body, but also the spirit through different things. Community is one of the things we’ve mentioned, but also getting that sunshine. You know, it is a mood booster. And this is something Dr. Price noted in his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. He said he noticed that most of the indigenous people he encountered were hardly wearing any clothing. Now, that’s not possible where I am to go nude in my backyard because I live in a city and people could peer in and see me easily. But, you know, we are all covered up. Like you said earlier, we’re doing the opposite of what our ancestors would have done.

So just to recap a little bit about Dr. Price, because I love him so much and respect his work. He was a dentist researcher from the 1930s. And he himself noticed that the people and the children coming into his dental clinic had dental deformities, as he called them, you know, crowded teeth and cavities and then poor behavior. The kids would have issues with their vision and their hearing. And he’s like, what is going on? Because he had a family member who worked for National Geographic and he got those magazines. And he thought, wait a minute, the people I’m seeing in my clinic look way different than these people in these other countries. They look hale and hearty. Their teeth are beautifully aligned. I don’t see the crowding I’m seeing in my practice. And they look optimistic. What’s going on?

So he took it upon himself to travel the world for 10 years, he and his wife, Florence, went all over the place. He was literally collecting data because he was a scientist and researcher. And he wanted to see, number one, do these people exist? And if they do, what are they eating that is serving them so well? And then in the second place, he wanted to take note of and analyze in his lab what they were eating and see if we could replicate it in the modern or developed world, right?

So he went everywhere from Switzerland to the South Sea Pacific Islands to Australia. And of course, the diets were very different. In Alaska, for example, it was whale blubber and seal oil and all kinds of seafood, as you could imagine. In Kenya, it was meat and milk and blood. And in Switzerland, it was a lot of dairy products and sourdough and rye breads. I mean, they were really different, but they had things in common. So, he made note of all of this in his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, because what he noticed too was the healthiest peoples were the ones still eating their traditional, local, and I would say organic diets, getting plenty of sunshine, living in community.

And then the people that were in that same tribal group or indigenous people group who departed from their nutritional diet ways and started to include more flour and sugar and oils and canned foods, condensed milk and so forth, their health started to deteriorate. But not only theirs, Katie, and this is especially important for our listeners here. Their subsequent generations would see the crowding of the teeth, the compromised immune system, and so forth.

So this was reversible, I’m happy to report. And Dr. Price noted it because he found one family, I think the woman had three or four kids, and she and her husband had departed from their traditional diet, whatever part of the world they were in, I don’t recall just now. And so their kids started to display these issues of crowded teeth, cavities, issues with clubfoot, and different things like that. And then he met the families, he reminded them, go back to your eating ways, not mine, for goodness sakes, eat your way, what has served your people well. And when they did, the next child they had did not have nearly the amount of issues that the earlier kids had had that were the result of the compromised diet, and which indeed compromised their health.

So fascinating stuff. And honestly, when I started my travels, I was like, I’m going to go everywhere Dr. Price went. I’ve been to a few places, I’ve been to Switzerland, Australia, Kenya, Peru. But then I realized, hey, the world is so big, let me keep going. You know, so I’ve been to Mexico and different places, Cuba and places that he didn’t even have on his list. I hope to go to Asia, I have been to some parts of it, but I was in Mongolia.

And yeah, I’ll segue way to just tell a little story here too. It’s really important, I think, as we’ve mentioned already, to get outside, realizing that there is a nature deficit disorder going on right now, right? That we do need more of that sunshine and contact with the earth. And kids, of course, are ready to do it. They’ll take off their shoes and stuff. As long as you turn the screens off, they want to run out there and do that. And in Mongolia, I met the most resilient and strong people that I’ve met anywhere in my travels, I would say. And in part, it’s because they face these harsh elements every day. It is not all sunshine like you’d find in Cuba or the South Sea Pacific Islands. I mean, it is rough out there and cold. And yet they bundle up and they spend time milking their yaks. Yes, they have yaks and camels. And they spend time training the eagles because they have these eagle hunting traditions out there. It’s just wild. But yes, the people were so ready and strong and beautiful. And most of them, because they live so far from the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, they are resilient because they make use of what they have. And I’ll say right now, it’s not vegetables and kale and broccoli and stuff like that. It’s really it’s mostly meat products and milk and so forth. And they do the best they can with what they have, making broths and soups and stews. And they are just an amazing people. And I think we would do well to get more time outside as our ancestors did and as these indigenous people’s group, people groups are doing today.

Katie: And I know we’re going to get to go deeper on the things that you’ve learned, the secrets that you’ve learned from these populations in our next episode. So you guys stay tuned for that one. It will air next. But for this episode, this has been such a fun conversation. I will put links to a lot of the things you’ve talked about, as well as to where people can find you online and keep in touch and keep learning with you. But I’m so grateful for this conversation. Thank you so much for being here and for sharing. And we’ll get to do our next episode very soon.

Hilda: Love it, Katie. Thank you so much.

Katie: And thank you for listening. 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.

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About Katie Wells

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

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