393: Fish Oil, Nature’s Real Superfoods, and Strengthening Immunity With Nora Gedgaudas

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Fish Oil, Natures Real Superfoods and Strengthening Immunity With Nora Gedgaudas
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393: Fish Oil, Nature’s Real Superfoods, and Strengthening Immunity With Nora Gedgaudas
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We’re back for a second episode with Nora Gedgaudas, who is a board-certified nutritional consultant and a clinical neurofeedback specialist. She has over 20 years of clinical experience and she’s also an extremely detailed researcher. I always love to hear her thoughts on controversial health topics since she goes deep and leaves no stone unturned.

In this interview, we tackle the questions you ask the most, like the current data and science on fermented cod liver oil, what nature’s real superfoods are, and data-backed ways that we can all strengthen our immune system, especially going into this time of the year.

Remember: If you can’t listen, catch the transcript below!

Episode Highlights With Nora Gedgaudas

  • How to become your own health researcher
  • The importance of asking better questions
  • An important reason to turn off the news and avoid social media
  • How to avoid learned helplessness which is epidemic in our time
  • The biggest creativity killer that you can avoid easily
  • The newest stuff on fermented cod liver oil
  • The science on masks right now… what does the data actually say?
  • And more!

Resources We Mention

Did you enjoy this episode? Please drop a comment below or leave a review on iTunes to let us know. We value knowing what you think and this helps other moms find the podcast as well.

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Katie: Hello, and welcome to “The Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com. That’s “wellness” with an E on the end. My new line of personal care products, good for your hair and teeth. We have hair care and toothpaste and now hand sanitizer as well you can check out at wellnesse.com.

This episode, I’m here with Nora Gedgaudas, who is a board-certified nutritional consultant and a clinical neurofeedback specialist. She has over 20 years of clinical experience and she’s also an extremely detailed researcher. Always love to hear her research. And as you’ll hear today, she goes deep on every topic that she researches. In this one specifically, we tackle some questions that I keep getting from you guys, things like the current data and science on fermented cod liver oil, about fish oil in general, what nature’s real superfoods are, and data-backed ways that we can all strengthen our immune system, especially going into this time of the year. So as always with Nora, lots of information in this episode, and without further ado, let’s join her now.
Nora, welcome back.

Nora: Oh, Katie, it’s great to be back again with you and your great audience.

Katie: I’m always so excited to chat with you. I know the first time we met we chatted for hours, I think, and had so many topics to talk about. And this is fun, we get to record and let other people join in on our conversation. I’d love to… I have a whole host of topics for you today. But what I wanna make sure that we touch on before we go deep on some other stuff is what the research is saying right now and what you found in your research regarding fermented cod liver oil because this is something that was widely recommended by a lot of people for a long time. It’s something that I think was popularized by, you know, Weston A. Price Foundation, and Weston A. Price’s work and his research in nutrition and physical degeneration. And I know that there is some new data and that you have done quite a bit of research in this area, in general. So I’d love to start there. And like I said, we’ll jump into many more topics, but let’s tackle that one first.

Nora: So, for the idea of fermented cod liver oil is actually a more recent thing. It was actually never… Nothing called fermented cod liver oil was ever mentioned by Weston Price. There are certain people with a vested interest in promoting or selling fermented cod liver oil that are doing so. But you have to realize that, you know, oil and fat don’t ferment. You know, fats rancidify, right? Carbohydrates ferment and proteins putrefy, you know, when they sit around. So, you know, the idea of fermenting a fat or an oil, you know, it sounds like it’s doing something positive, but in fact, it seems to be doing little more than deteriorating the quality of the oil. And, you know, certain people I knew within, you know, the Weston A. Price Foundation, which has a very close relationship with Dave Wetzel, you know, who owns Green Pastures and who popularized the use of fermented cod liver oil, what they call fermented.

There were a number of health complaints that were coming in. And, you know, Dr. Kaayla Daniel, at the time, was the vice president and the chief scientist or whatever, at the Weston A. Price Foundation. She’d won their, you know, integrity and science award, and all of that, very, very good and capable researcher. And she was getting a lot of health complaints from members that were saying that that they, you know, felt less well, you know, taking the fermented cod liver oil, that they were having untoward effects. And, so, there was a lot of resistance on the part of, you know, Sally fell into an investigation because she’s so strongly believed in its benefits. And so, a number of people, some of whom are known, and some of whom chose to remain anonymous, pulled together their money, their own money out of their own pockets, and fund about 10 grand worth and funded a research, basically sent out samples of this stuff to some of the best labs in the world to have it an analyzed to determine.

Because, you know, the data results or whatever the lab results that Dave Wetzel presented, you know, were his own proprietary testing methods that nobody could replicate apparently. You know, when he had his own, you know, personal analysis, but there had never been any independent analysis of this stuff. And they felt that there was a need for this. One person who was a longtime ally and who was actually a longtime friend of mine, who was an ally of the Weston A. Price Foundation, you know, for decades, suffered what he determined was near heart failure as a result of supplementing with it in large doses the way he been recommended. And when he stopped taking it, he improved some… He was actually within… He ended up being taken to the hospital. This was Ron Schmid, by the way. I mean, he would have no qualms about being identified. He was very, very vocal about his condemnation because he found research to show that rancid oil and rancid cod liver oil can be cardiotoxic. And he didn’t know that, and he’s taking huge amounts of this stuff. So he wanted… You know, he was one of the people that contributed to the research fund.

And what ended up coming back from some of the best labs in the world was that this was the most rancid, you know, fish oil product that they’d ever measured, that they’d ever researched. And, you know, unfortunately, there was a bit of a media blackout within the organization. And, you know, Kaayla, you know, attempted to reason with the powers that were within an organization. And there was a lot of resistance to that. And so, Kaayla felt it was her obligation as a scientist, as a responsible scientist to publish the findings of all of this. And she was “quite bitter” about the way it all got handled. And that, unfortunately, also came across in the article she wrote, but the science substantively in her article is solid.

And if anybody wants to read more about what transpired, they can go to Kaayla Daniels’s website or you can just do in your search bar, preferably with DuckDuckGo, or Qwant, or Swisscows, as opposed to Google, type in “Hook, Line, and Stinker.” And that was her initial article on that. And she’s since done some follow up research publications. But I know of people personally who, you know, had very unsavory health effects, shall we say, and whose departure from this world may very well have been hastened by the use of all of that. And obviously, I can’t make claims one way or the other to that effect. All I know is that I will not use fermented cod liver oil. In fact, when I first took a look at the research that came out of those labs, you know, I had just recently decided I was going to give that product a go, and I purchased a case of it, which was not a cheap thing to do. And it all went into the dumpster, and I will not touch it.

And, you know, a good rule of thumb, if a fish oil that you supplement with tastes bad, it probably is bad. You know, it should…a good quality fish oil tastes really mild. It should not taste fishy and gross. But you know, cod liver oil is predominantly a vitamin A. I view cod liver oil is predominantly a vitamin A supplement. And if there are high levels of D in it, it’s because, you know, it’s been fortified somehow. It’s been added in. In fact, there was some significant amount of D2 that appeared to have been added to the Green Pasture’s product, which suggests it’s been cut with other oils and vegetable oils or whatever else. I’m trying to remember all of this now because it’s been a few months.

But yeah, I mean, I’m not a fan and it’s not a product that I would ever recommend to anybody at this point. And honestly, you can’t find so much as one word mentioned in nutrition, physical degeneration, about “fermented cod liver oil.” Weston Price mentioned cod liver oil a couple of times in passing. It wasn’t like a major focus of what he wrote about. But he talked about it as a possible alternative for people that either didn’t have access to liver or didn’t like to eat liver, maybe this was something that they could do to get there. But obviously, eating liver is going to be the best possible thing you can do because you’re getting such a broader complement of nutrients in… I consider liver the ultimate superfood, you know, shove over camu camu and even turmeric. I mean, liver is so nutrient-dense. It just has so much going for it…

Katie: I’m glad you brought up liver because that was a couple of the follow-ups I had related to that. Like, I think when it came to fermented cod liver oil, I agree with you that there’s like all of this new data we need to look at. And I think the point that people were looking for in that was that it was supposed to be very nutrient-dense food. So I love that you brought up liver because I’ve heard liver called nature’s multivitamin. I think that’s something we don’t talk about enough, you know. So I’d love to hear, just kind of give us an overview of why things like organ meats are such superfoods and also maybe address what about fish oil, in general, because that’s another follow up question. You mentioned a little bit of, like, what to look for in fish oil, but that’s a controversial one, right?

Nora: Yeah, you know, right. And so I don’t actually personally use cod liver oil. I think, you know, Nordic Naturals has a pretty clean one, but it’s not going to be super, super high in a lot of stuff. But it’s at least not likely to be rancid. But, if I could have my pick of what to recommend, I would… You know, if you don’t like liver, learn to love it or figure out a way of getting it in your diet, you know, that’s palatable to you. And they’re… You know, I can give you my number one hack for getting liver into your diet in a way where…I mean, a meaningful amount into your diet. I know sometimes people will like… And I’ve recommended this before, to dice up little bits of it and mix it into ground beef. But it’s hard to get meaningful amounts when you’re trying to hide it that way. And I discovered this hack. And, you know, it certainly changed my life because I don’t like the taste of beef liver. I just don’t. I love poultry liver, but it’s not quite as nutrient-dense as beef liver. So say you have, I guess the way in which I’ve used this the most, but I’ve also used it in sauces. But say it’s… We’re moving into colder, you know, months now, at least, those of us who weren’t living in Florida. And chili, you know, is kind of a heartier kind of food, you know, for this time of year. And so say you make a whole big pot of chili, right, and you’re getting ready to serve that, and it’s bubbling on the stove, you can take, I guess, depending on how much chili you’ve got in the pot, right, and how much you’re making for how many people, you can take a huge amount of liver, like half a pound. I’ve actually thrown as much as a pound, which is maybe just a little too much if you don’t wanna taste it at all, but you can do it good half a pound and not worry about tasting this.

You take a half-pound or so, order half-pound depending on the size of the pot of chili you’ve got of raw liver and throw it into, you know, a food processor or a blender, and you puree the crap out of it until it is pure liquid. And just before you serve the chili, just pour that liquid into the pot and stir it up. And what you will get is a creamier version. It’s crazy how well that works. And the other thing I’ve done is I’ve taken in pureed liver and poured it into like silicone type ice cube trays. And so when I have like a sauce, you know, or something, I can just throw a cube of that in, you know, get it a little bit thawed room temperature, so it’s not quite so frozen solid. But, you know, take that cube and let it kind of thought to room temperature a little bit while I’m preparing a meal. And if I have like a “spaghetti sauce” or something like that, just toss that in right before serving. And again, it adds a creamy texture, but you don’t taste the livery kind of flavor. And you don’t get… Obviously, what a lot of people don’t like about liver too is the kind of weird texture that it gets when it gets overcooked. And this kind of eliminates, you know, those concerns. So that’s a great way of getting it in. But, you know, when you’re eating a whole food like that, as opposed to something extracted from a whole food, you’re getting all of the accessory nutrients that are designed by nature to work together, you know, and when consumed. And so, in organ meats, in general, are the most nutrient-dense parts of any, you know, animal source food, you know, that we might be inclined to eat. Most people though when they think of meat, they think of, you know, steak, and chicken, and whatever else. And we’ve kind of developed a taboo in our culture against consuming organ meats. Well, I guess, pun intended, but it seems awful, right? You know, their tastes and texture is associated with many organ meats that are unfamiliar, and therefore, many people don’t find palatable.

But there are ways of developing a taste for these things. And, you know, you do that in part by just sneaking it in a little at a time, you know. And you find creative recipes, also, which I like to think I created some of those in my “Primal Fat Burner” book. You know, I kind of went into creating recipes for that book, kicking and screaming, because I just didn’t really want to have, you know, a cookbook associated with my thing because that’s not my thing. And when I cook, also, it’s just kind of a pinch of this and a dash of that, and I don’t follow recipes. And when I read other books that have recipes in them, you know, I never ever use that part of the book. So I always feel like I’ve paid for half a book that I won’t use. But I’ve gotten so many positive emails from people who have, you know, just really, really loved the recipes. And so, you know, in the end, I’m glad I did it. And I think there are a lot of really good recipes and I incorporate organ meats in some of the recipes. So I hope, you know, people will experiment with that. It is really important, though, to learn to love those things. And if you can’t, if you absolutely can’t, you know, there is a company, and I’m sure you’re familiar with them, Ancestral Supplements, and Brian Johnson is just a really great guy. And what he’s done is he has… And I don’t have any financial ties, you know, with him at all, but I just really respect what he does with his business. He has a number of grass-fed animals over in New Zealand, and, you know, on pristine pastures, and things like that. And when the animals are processed, he basically takes all of the organs and tissues and encapsulates them in the minimally processed fashion so that you can get the nutritional value from various organ meats and tissues that either you don’t like the taste of, or frankly, may not be readily available. It’s really hard to find some of these things sometimes.

And so that’s another option for people, I think, is, you know, purchasing organ meats in a supplemental form if they don’t have access to these things in an easy way. And, you know, it’s more expensive. You’re having to swallow a bunch of pills, instead of just simply eat food. But it’s I think, a wonderful adjunct to any, you know, fundamentally healthy ancestral diet, you know, is the addition of various organs and tissues that may not be readily accessible through, you know, the usual stores that you go to or the butchers that you go to. I mean, you can also… And increasingly, I’m really passionate about encouraging people to establish relationships with the people that raise your food, and go out to the farms, and look into the eyes of the animals that may end up on your dinner plate at some point, and find out how they’re being fed, and make sure that they’re being, you know, fed and treated in the right way, so that you can feel good about where your food comes from, and that you feel a more direct connection. Because I would say, out of all of the things that are missing from our modern food supply, it is our relationship, our direct relationship to that.

And the psychology that comes with that, I think, is a part of the way that we digest and assimilate those foods. You know, just as an example, I mean, I’ve experienced, you know, what it’s like to go and buy something shrink-wrapped, and then cook it up, and then eat it while I’m watching, you know, something on TV or just while I’m on the run somewhere versus having looked in the eyes of something that, you know, later wound up on my dinner plate. I can tell you that the experience of taking that food in was extremely different. And there was almost a reverence that came with…really quite literally a sense of reverence for me that came with consuming, you know, the meat of an animal that I had, you know, seen alive. And whether that’s through hunting, which this was that case, or whether it’s through raising your own animals, and butchering, and processing them, and whatever else, that direct relationship, there’s a whole cycle of life and death of which we’re a part.

And we have the illusion in modern society of being somehow separate from that. And it’s part of the mental illness of the modern age, I think, is the idea that we’re somehow separate from nature. You know, with all due respect, I see that the advent and the popularity of vegetarianism and veganism, especially, to be highly symptomatic of just how far removed we’ve become from the natural world in which we evolved. And we always get into trouble when we think we’re somehow separate from nature or above it in some way. The consumption of food is neither a chain nor a ladder, it’s a circle. And we need to recognize and reclaim our part in that, I think. I think that’s a part of reclaiming our most optimal health. So, anyway, that’s my take on that. And in certainly organ meats, in ancient or primitive so-called, you know, ancestral societies, those were always considered the most sacred important foods. Well, the foods that were highest in fat and fat-soluble nutrients, in particular, were the foods that were considered the most important, by far, and were revered the most. But organ meats were always selected preferentially to muscle meats. You know, and we’ve sort of flip-flopped that now. And, you know, most people tend to just not even think about organ meats. When they think about meat, they think about either processed meats of some kind or they think about beef or chicken. And don’t think about all of the other things that went into, you know, that animal that contain a very, very high degree of nutritional values. So, organ meat is sort of a big deal, but I don’t preach into the choir with you.

Katie: You’re so right. It’s also that, like, connection to food into nature. And I know you do a lot of work to help people learn to reestablish that. And there are so many others in our community as well that give people resources to help do that. And I think with liver, especially, it’s important to note, you touched on it, but the vitamin D component, especially right now, and I think that’s a good segue as well into kind of another area I wanted to talk about. But we know from years and years of data that vitamin D and having an adequate vitamin D status, which liver does contain vitamin D, is an important factor for maintaining a strong immune system, and for being able to respond to things like respiratory illness or now is we’re moving into flu season and cold season. And so, I’d love to touch on, I know that you have done a whole big report on this, but all of the aspects of that of what we need to know to support our body at a time like this and also, maybe to touch on a controversial one of some of the things that we think we might be doing to protect ourselves that could actually be harming our body.

Nora: Doing more harm than good. Yeah. Well, the vitamin D thing, so there’s actually not very high levels of vitamin D in something like liver. It’s not stored in the liver. The richest natural source of vitamin D is actually in pastured animal fats, you know, within the fats of these animals. And the richest natural source of natural dietary vitamin D is actually 100% pastured lard, you know, pig fat, where the pigs have been allowed to roam around in fresh air and sunshine, and have sunshine literally beating down on their skin while they manufacture a bunch of vitamin D. You know, unlike other mammals, a lot of other mammals anyway other than, you know, maybe us, that they don’t have a lot of hair on their bodies. And that actually allows for better penetration of sunshine and higher synthesis of vitamin D3. But yes, vitamin D is absolutely critical for… Well, see, all of the fat-soluble nutrients are, you know, but there has been, I think it was an Indonesian study that talked about vitamin D, and survival rates, and infection rates when it came to the current, you know, virus de jour, you’re 90% more likely to die if your vitamin D levels were below 20 nanograms per milliliter versus, you know, like something less than 5% likely to die if your D levels were over 60 nanograms or between 60 and 80 nanograms per milliliter. Or actually, I think in that study was over… I think they actually had the healthy levels as over 40. So, you know, vitamin D, I consider between 60 and 80 to be more optimal for most things. And the thing is when we have inflammation and we are exposed to infections and things like that, we blow through D really fast. So, I like emulsified into forms of D in our life assemble that are a little more bioavailable. But I’m not a fan of, like, just popping vitamin D pills all the time. Obviously, getting it from food is really important because you have accessory nutrients that are going to work with it. In my book, “Primal Fat Burner,” I’ve talked about the three amigos, which were vitamin D3, vitamin A, and I mean, true vitamin A, retinol, the kind of stuff you get in liver, which we were just talking about, and also vitamin K2, again, found in pastured animal fats.

And poultry fat, in particular, and poultry liver are pretty high in K2 and the richest natural supplemental source, and actually the only natural supplemental source of K2 and K4, which is the only form that is found in, like, for instance, the human brain, that is actually taken up in maternal umbilical blood. The MK-7 stuff that’s so popular is actually not absorbed in the umbilical blood at all. And there really is no basis for that form of K2 in the human diet. And I mean, that’s a whole controversial thing I could rant on for a while, but I don’t wanna get too far off track. MK-4 is the form of vitamin K2 that we evolved consuming. So it makes sense to me that that’s what we should be going for, richest natural supplemental form. And again, I don’t have financial ties to this company, but there’s a specific genetic strain of emu oil. And there’s a company called Walkabout Health Products. And they have had the highest levels of K2 measured of any MK-4 levels, of any food.

And it is basically a food substance. It’s a whole, you know, food in oil form. You know, so you can be popping vitamin D pills all day long. And we know that vitamin D aids in the absorption of calcium, for instance, among, you know, a whole bunch of other things that vitamin D does. But what actually determines how that calcium gets used and where it is sequestered and absorbed in the body, and utilized in the body, that decision is basically made by “vitamin K2.” And so if you’re taking a bunch of vitamin D and you’re not getting adequate K2, you could end up calcifying things that were never meant to be calcified. You know, your heart, your brain, your joints, you know, your endothelium, your arteries, I mean, and all of that, which is, of course, not desirable. So, with all the research around vitamin D, which, you know, I’m thrilled that vitamin D is recognized for its importance, but we have to understand that nutrients don’t operate in a vacuum in nature, that within foods, they’re complex with other nutrients that they’re designed to work in concert with, in order to optimize your health.

And vitamin A, and D3 and K2, you know, I call them the three amigos and they must ride together. You know, you really want to have foods that represent all three of these nutrients in your diet or supplements that represent all three of these nutrients in their most natural food-based forms in your diet, if you want to get the best benefits from them. And of course, vitamin A is so important, you know, for the health of your endothelium, for the health of your mucosa, of your lungs, for instance. Vitamin A is enormously regenerative. And by the way, prior to World War II, the primary focus of anti-infective therapy was retinol, not beta carotene, you know, not any plant-based so-called pro-vitamin A, but retinol, the stuff that can only be found in animal source foods. And of course, liver, again, is the richest natural source.

And so if you want healthy lungs, you need healthy natural saturated fats because lung surfactant is a disaturate molecule. You don’t want a whole bunch of polyunsaturated fats making up the surfactant in your lungs. And the reason that a desaturate molecule is what your body makes lung surfactant from, is that saturated fat by its very nature is inherently resistant to oxidation, right? The more polyunsaturated the fat, the more prone it is to going rancid quickly. Saturated fat helps to protect things. It protects fat-soluble nutrients from rancidity in the body. It helps to protect your tissues from overly rapid oxidation. And so, you know, again, animal source foods are pretty key to maintaining optimized immune health right now. And really, that should be everybody’s focus, really… You know, if you’re… I know a lot of people, they think the way to go is locking themselves behind closed doors, hermetically sealing themselves in a bubble, strapping a diaper on their face, and wearing gloves, and staying as far away as possible from their fellow humans. And this is not how the human immune system evolve.

This is not the kind of thing that actually strengthens immune function. In fact, it’s been actually demonstrated now through a whole wealth of varied data, that you’re more likely to weaken your immune function by doing that than you are to protect yourself in any meaningful way. You know, the thing that we have to realize is that whatever these celebrity viruses that’s out there, now, it’s not going away. It’s not like a noxious or toxic gas that, you know, we can hide behind closed doors, and it’s gonna dissipate, and then we can come out and have normalcy again. Viruses are part of our natural environment. They have been for millions of years. And for at least the last 2 million years that we have been evolving as a species, we have done so in the presence of millions of these things, if not billions of these things. And we’re still here. And we’re here because we have an immune system that knows how to adapt itself to immune challenges, and it gets stronger through exposure. Now, I’m not suggesting that somebody who’s immune-compromised or is in some way and has multiple comorbidities, who’s super vulnerable, needs to run out and immediately expose themselves. What I am saying is that those people, especially, need to be focused on improving the health of their immune function and not trying to hide from the virus. I mean, that should be the priority, right, that doing what is necessary to rebuild your immune system’s strength and resiliency is your way out of that concern. That’s the number one way out of that concern. For the rest of us that are otherwise healthy, that don’t have, you know, untold comorbidities or vulnerabilities, for us, the best path forward is through what can be termed true herd immunity. And, you know, of course, Sweden has already accomplished this. And for the most part, so have we. You know, we see so-called… They’re calling it a casedemic now. You know, oh, all these new cases. Well, there’s all this new testing.

And that testing is highly, highly suspect. There is no accurate testing. Okay? There is no such thing as accurate testing. But false positives are a real consequence of most of this testing. So, you get high numbers of people testing positive, whatever that means. But when you look at where the rubber hits the road, which is an actual death rates, those have been plummeting now for months. And so, what you see with, you know, these divergent curves is really, if anything, evidence of herd immunity… If cases aren’t… Well, what they’re calling cases. So, in medicine, what is normally referred to as a case is an actual active infection where someone is sick. Okay. Positive tests do not a case make. A positive test is just, you know, some kind of indication that there has been exposure, but it’s not necessarily evidence of illness. And, you know, we have to be very careful about the language that we use. And unfortunately, the media is not at all careful, and vested interests are not at all careful.

And that’s creating a lot of unnecessary hysteria, when, in fact, you know, the vast majority of people, like, we’re talking 99.96% of everybody is going to be just fine. And the people that aren’t going to be just fine… You know, even the CDC claims that only of 6% of the deaths. And I mean, we know. We’ve all seen these headlines and we’ve all seen the fact that the CDC has made their idea of diagnosing, this is extremely liberal, right? I mean, they don’t even have to have a test result. It’s like if somebody has a cough or a sniffle or, you know, a couple of symptoms, that really could be almost any respiratory illness, that’s sufficient to just slap a label of this particular virus on that and call it that. And if a person has a half dozen things wrong with them at the time they die, and they happen to test positive, well, that will be listed as a COVID death. And we have to kind of try to reclaim our sanity a little bit and take a look at what is actually happening and how hysteria is being promulgated in an unnecessary fashion.

So, you know, I’m not trying to turn this into conspiracy theory hour, although, just because something is called a conspiracy doesn’t mean it’s not necessarily true. But, you know, there are a lot of ways of looking at all this. This whole subject matters become a bit of a hall of mirrors. And a lot of rational discussion and a lot of rational look at the actual data and the numbers and evidence at hand has been overlooked in favor of a lot of fear and hysteria that are leading to I think much bigger health concerns, which involve, oh, I don’t know, poverty, the entire shutdown and controlled demolition of the economy, stress-related illness of all kinds, massive declines in mental health, massive increases in drug abuse and alcoholism, increases in all kinds of social unrest but also skyrocketing levels of suicide.

And we’re seeing now, many, many, many more deaths by orders of magnitude if you wanna look at the curves associated with death related to those issues. I mean, poverty alone is viewed by the World Health Organization as the number one cause of mortality worldwide, right? Well, now, it’s not just a third world problem anymore. You know, all aspects of modern society are now being subjected to the potential for poverty and starvation, and the starvation that, you know, problems that may ensue, you know, from all of this hysteria could result in, I’m trying to remember if this was a UN number, but 300,000 deaths or more per year, which, again, makes the deaths from COVID look like a speed bump by comparison. So, you know, we need to be a little bit rational and we need to be more focused on health than disease, right, on the restoration and support of immune and other health as opposed to doing things out of fear in order to try to avoid disease. It’s a very different mindset, but it’s a much healthier one.

And so, you know, in the long run, we’re gonna have to learn to live with whatever is in our environment. And I think that human contact is as much a nutrient and human touch, for crying out loud, is as much of a nutrient for us and is literally a life essential nutrient for each and every one of us as human beings, as is quality nutrition, fresh air, water, and sunshine. And avoiding one another and learning to live separately from one another, and in relative isolation from one another is the greatest recipe for death and destruction than anything else I can think of. This is… Once our lifestyles become dehumanizing, what’s the point, right? So, anyway, I’m just sort of on my rant here. I don’t know if I’ve deviated a little further from where you wanted me to go, but I’m happy to get roped back in if you want me to cover something in a little bit different way.

Katie: No, I think that’s such an important mindset shift and approach right now and especially now, as we know more. And like you said, the virus isn’t just going to go away. We can’t just isolate forever and hope that it eventually goes away. That’s not how it works. And to me, it’s a similar analogy to a shift I had to make internally when it came to food. After years of trying to lose weight, I had developed this sort of, like, deprivation mindset around food. And I had to make a mental switch toward the focus of nourishing my body and giving it enough calories and feeding it because I loved it versus depriving it because I was mad at it.

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And I feel like when it comes to our immune systems, that’s the shift we need to make as well, like moving away from the fear-based side, and like all of that, and moving into the supporting our body, supporting our immune system from a positive perspective, looking at the positive things that are within our control, versus just being afraid of the things that are outside of our control. And like you said so well, not to say people with comorbidities should not take cautions, that’s certainly not what we’re saying at all, but that acknowledging that there are many things within our control that maybe aren’t being talked about enough and that we also live our lives constantly in the sympathetic state of nervousness and fear, because being idle, I think, that’s actively suppressing our immune system as well.

Nora: Absolutely. There’s hardly anything more immunosuppressive than stress. And, you know, that does bring me to one of the big no-no’s. I mean, I hate to put it in negative terms, like the number one best thing you can do for your health is something that you don’t wanna do, and that is watching the news. You know, turn CNN and all of the rest of it off. And I mean, you know, it’s a tall order during a highly contentious election. But, you know, there was a really wonderful article published in “The Guardian” a few years ago. And the title of the article… And this was based on a bunch of research that had been done, that actually looked at the effect of people who regularly watch the news, looked at the effect of that upon their health. Now, this article was published long before, you know, this whole big scare that started about it, you know, less than a year ago now. But the title of the article was, “News is bad for you, and giving up reading it will make you happier.” And one of the things that they said in the article was “News is bad for your health, It leads to fear and aggression and hinders your creativity and ability to think deeply. The solution, stop consuming it altogether.” And there was another quote in there that stated that most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. Okay? And by the way, sugar is one of those other things that will absolutely suppress your immune function. And what are people doing right now? They’re sitting at home on their couches, not going anywhere, not moving around very much, and they’re eating comfort foods. And, you know, the vast majority… What has actually been found is that the countries that were the most locked down, and Argentina probably was the most lockdown country of any of them, like people have not gone out of their homes and some of them for like eight months. I mean, extreme lockdown measures.

They also had the highest rates of mortality. So the more lockdown a country is, the more isolated you are, the more sequestered you are. You know, in a confined space, the less healthy you’re likely to be and the less positive outcome you’re likely to have. You know, and conversely, in Sweden, you know, the death rate there from, you know, even infection is 0.058, no 0.0058%. You know, it’s next to nothing and they never locked down. The highest rate of mortality they had was through poor management of elder care facilities, which refreshingly, the Health Minister admitted that he’d made a mistake in how he initially handled that. But for the most part, things have gone back to normal there. They haven’t seen deaths in Sweden from this in months. So, you know, the restaurants are open, people are going to work. And the degree to which an economy can operate independent of the rest of the world in today’s society, today’s increasingly globalized society.

You know, their economy is doing a lot better than everybody else’s. But it’s interesting, the same article in “The Guardian” showed how mainstream news misleads and overrides rational thinking. And I have these notes from the article. “Mainstream news is irrelevant to anything that has the potential to improve the quality of your life. News has no true explanatory power. News is literally toxic to your body and brain.” It constantly triggers your limbic system and cortisol, and that then dysregulates your immune system and ravages your brain. In other words, your body finds itself in a state of chronic stress. And high-stress hormone levels cause impaired digestion, lack of cellular growth and healing, nervousness, and susceptibility to infections. It also leads to brain shrinkage. How convenient? The other potential side effects include anxiety, depression, aggression, tunnel vision, and desensitization. Also, watching the news regularly has been shown to increase cognitive errors and feeds the mother of all cognitive errors, which is corporate and political confirmation bias, not to mention social polarization.

News also inhibits thinking. Thinking requires concentration. Concentration requires uninterrupted time. News pieces are specifically engineered to interrupt you. They are like viruses, ironically, that steal attention for their own purposes. News makes us shallow thinkers, but it’s worse than that. News severely affects our memory function according to at least one Canadian study. News is an intentional interruption system. Also, news works like a drug, literally altering the structure of your brain. The more news we consume, the more we exercise the neural circuits devoted to skimming and multitasking while ignoring those used for reading deeply and thinking deeply with any meaningful focus. News wastes our time. News makes us passive. News stories are overwhelmingly about things you can’t influence. It grinds us down until we adopt a worldview that is pessimistic, desensitized, sarcastic, cynical, and fatalistic.

The scientific term is learned helplessness, right, which is also associated with clinical depression, which is another major deadly epidemic of our time. News also kills creativity. Like, you know, we need independent reporting that police’s our institutions and uncovers actual truth. This is why we have to support quality alternative media, you know, like your show, for instance. And this also is why alternative media happens to be in the crosshairs of the mainstream media right now. So, you know, don’t be living every moment of every day in quarantine indoors. You know, you should be out. You know, here’s the irony, we’re talking about vitamin D. What was one of the first things that they did, you know, when they locked us down? They made it “illegal” which is not illegal. There have been no laws passed, you know, quarantining or forcing mask-wearing. Those aren’t laws, these mandates are… Anyway. It just kind of makes me crazy. But they shut down the beaches.

You know, they tell people, “You can’t go to the park. You can’t walk in fresh air and sunshine.” You know, I might lose my mind if I walk, you know, into a nature area and I’m walking on a nature path, and I see people walking on the path wearing masks. Really? You know, and shutting down the beaches, keeping people away from fresh air and sunshine as if that is supposed to be something protective, you know, a lot of what’s going on makes no sense. Just as most things bureaucratic make no sense. I don’t know of any example of where bureaucracy has ever done anything to benefit humanity. We need to take a step back and take a more, like I say, rational look, and we need to be open to voices that aren’t necessarily in lockstep, so to speak, you know, with the mainstream orthodoxy, right. The mainstream talking points. And then, as far as I know, you know, personally, there’s far too much censorship happening, there shouldn’t be any censorship happening.

And it’s not just that there’s censorship happening, there’s mass censorship happening. And that’s not the way we get to the bottom of something that, by the way, I mean, we have to get this right. And we can’t get this right by suppressing dissenting discussion, you know, by suppressing discussion, in general. Talking points aren’t going to save us. And so, there’s… You know, wow, at this point, with respect to this whole debacle that we’ve all been in the middle of now and for about the last eight months. I went into researching this whole thing, kicking and screaming. I really just… You know, people talk about it, you know, I roll a little bit. It’s like, “Okay, I’ve got other things to do” because every year, they try to scare us with something. Every year, they’re trying to sell, you know, a new sickness, a new vaccine, or whatever.

But eventually, you know, just simply by the sheer prevalence of the issue, I was forced to really take a look at it, and I realized I had to take a responsible look at it. I couldn’t just go with my automatic instincts about it, just kind of being, I don’t know, something questionable. I really needed to look at and follow where the data led me. And that’s what I did. I was perfectly willing to go wherever the data led me and I really worked hard at keeping myself and my own biases in check. And, you know, after now, I can honestly say, I easily put close to 400 hours into this from all different angles. So, I mean, I could come at this from so many different angles.

One of the things I did for my audience and for my prospective audience, is I created an extended report. And gosh, I rewrote it so many times because I was tempted to go in so many different directions with it. And I really, really wanted to, you know, express as many truths as I’ve been able to uncover and could support with really good quality, credible documentation and data. But what I chose to hone in on and focus upon was a much more kind of positive approach that was going to be actionable and practical and self-empowering for anybody that read it. Because it’s not hard to scare the crap out of somebody with all this stuff there is to know about this. And really, the things that are scary is to have very little to do with any risk of getting sick from a virus. But what I wanted to focus on was the self-empowerment of individuals who were already afraid and were concerned about getting sick and concerned about what to do to keep themselves healthy. And so, with a particular focus upon these types of respiratory illnesses, of which there are about a couple of hundred different kinds, you know, and all of that, but with respect to respiratory illnesses, I did my due diligence, and I created an extremely, shall we say, nutrient-dense report that anybody can access for free.

All of the work that I’ve done in this arena, all 400, however many hours that I’ve done in this respect, I consider it personally kind of unethical, I guess, to charge for that information because there’s just too much at stake. And I really want people to be empowered with good quality, credible, accurate information. And so, I created the initial report and anybody can access it by either going to primalcourses.com, which is my educational website, or my homepage on my regular website, which is primalbody-primalmind.com. And you can put in your email address, and a link will be sent to you where you can access the report for free. I will not abuse your email, I promise. And on that same page, once you’ve read through the report, and you’ve absorbed that information, I’ve also been adding a tremendous amount of additional information coming from all different angles regarding all aspects of what’s going on.

And again, I carefully vet my sourcing. I don’t just go and say, “Well, I saw this YouTube video that said…” You know, although, good luck watching a YouTube video that’s gonna contradict the mainstream narrative. Those tend to disappear very quickly now. But I digress. I’ve been very, very careful to vet the information and to choose information that truly comes from credible, verifiable sources. If there is independent journalism involved, I will not post anything unless that journalist has supplied me with all of their sourcing and until I have gone to all that sourcing. I mean, this is how many rabbit holes I’ve gone down. I will go and I will look up the references, and then I’ll read those references. And I’ll go to the references those references provided, I’ll look at those references. And I have gone down innumerable rabbit holes in order, you know, to ascertain that the information I’m providing, at least has a basis of credibility, right? And of course, science isn’t the last word. It’s the latest word, right? All we can do is the best we can do with the current data at hand. But there’s quite a bit more that we know now that we didn’t know eight months ago.

And there have been a lot of mistakes and miscalculations made, that we’re still paying the price for and that are still driving public policy. And we kind of need to sober up a little bit from the drunken hysteria and really start to pay attention to information that’s not just simply being spoon-fed to you through a media that already is being driven by and controlled by vested interests that have, you know, that certain business interests and corporate interests that are vested in making sure that more of the same continues. And, you know, we know that the top four billionaires in the world have increased their bottom lines now by something, is it 586 or 589, well, probably close by now to $600 billion. Well, you know, I think it’s worth questioning that because some of these individuals have a very high degree of control over what is published or broadcasted in the news, and what is shaping public policy and health policy.

And so, nobody is really coming to save us here. It’s really important that we accept some individual responsibility and that, you know, we become the ones that we’ve been waiting for, right? We have to learn to think independently of our peers, and of social media, and mainstream media. And we need to just be willing to be open enough to take in other information, and to give people some credit or, you know, a little bit…or not credit, but to, you know… I mean, I have to take into account the fact that it’s hard to find alternative information, right? Because so much of it has been carefully parsed out to us, you know, in a carefully spoon-fed manner. So, we have to learn to dig. We have to become, as I like to think of myself, you know, truth archaeologists. And we have to learn to dig beneath what appears to be, you know, the surface truth and figure out what it is that we actually need to know. And again, I do believe that we need to be shifting our focus away from how do we, you know, hide from this virus? How do we, you know, hide from each other?

It needs to be instead, how do we meet the challenge, right? How can our immune system best meet the challenge of these things? And again, looking at things from an ancestral perspective and understanding how our immune systems evolved in the first place. Look, you know, you can’t be afraid, you know, of, say, I don’t know, lifting a heavy weight, right? Because while my muscles are weak, so I really shouldn’t try to lift anything heavy, right? These are the people that are hiding at home because they think they have a compromised immune system. Well, you know, sitting and hiding at home is not strengthening your immune system. It’s not getting any better. So the focus really needs to be instead of not doing the thing you think, you know, is going to, you know, put you at risk is, you know, take some baby steps towards strengthening your immune function. And obviously, understanding that you don’t have any wiggle room with respect to what it will take nutritionally for you. You know, you need to not compromise your diet and compromise the quality of the food that you consume, right, and the things that you indulge in. You really don’t have room for a lot of, you know, indulgences, when you feel that your immune system may be compromised. That’s when you kind of need to take the bull by the horns, take responsibility for that and work on strengthening your immune function, instead of just making it worse, you know, by putting on masks and hiding at home and isolating yourself from other people, including the people that you love and trust the most in this world.

Katie: Yeah, that’s such an important point for all of us, too, it’s like, we all need to take personal responsibility for ourselves. And that’s gonna look different for each of us. And we’re all responsible. We are our own primary health care provider, ourselves. We do work with practitioners, but we are our own primary health care provider and we need to take that responsibility seriously. And I think the other point you made so well is absolutely spot-on is when we believe we’re absolutely certain about something, I think we have an obligation not just to be open to other viewpoints, but actually to actively read and consider other viewpoints to make sure that we’re well informed in our opinion. And I think what we need so badly in the world right now is more people willing to do that, to critically question their own beliefs to make sure that they’ve learned and to have empathy for other viewpoints. And also adults, who can be examples of looking at someone and saying, “I may have a different opinion than you, but I still love and respect you as a person. And let’s have a constructive kind conversation.” I feel like especially right now we’ve lost a lot…

Nora: It takes frontal lobes to do that, you know. And the problem is… You know, and I talked about this in my first book, “Primal Body, Primal Mind.” In the primal mind section, toward the end of the book, I talked about, you know, what actually happens to the brain of a person under chronic stress and fear is…what literally happens is an immediate hypoperfusion to the executive functioning part of our brain, which is literally the part of our brain that makes us the most human. When we go into fight or flight mode, you know, everything gets shunted away from critical thinking because, you know, when you’re in survival mode, you don’t have time to sit down. And, you know, it’s not selectively advantageous to sit down, you know, and start to contemplate when the saber-toothed tiger’s coming at you. You know, you just want to act. You know, you’re immediately in survival mode, literally fight or flight. And so, all things are… The aspects of our brain that are responsible for actually thinking through something, maybe in the context of the past or in context of, you know, all available data and all of that kind of thing, that stuff goes out the window. Blood flow to that part of the brain shuts down. And, you know, in my view, it’s kind of a hallmark of the society in which we’re living. We’re either prone to knee jerk emotional reactivity toward everything. And, you know, fearful, you know, behavior based on fear, which makes us very malleable, by the way. We’ll do almost anything when we’re afraid if somebody tells us, “Oh, I know how to fix it. I know you’re afraid. I know how to fix it, just, you know, do what I tell you.” We have to really, really resist that. And the other part of that, of course, is that people are also more likely to behave aggressively and judgementally and impulsively when they’re in that…you know, when they’re in a state of neurologically sympathetic dominance, in other words, fight or flight. And that’s a hallmark of the society in which we live right now.

It’s all basically almost definable by those characteristics. And, you know, it’s a great argument for why another… You know, maybe the antithesis to watching the mainstream news would be to instead go sit in a quiet space and focus on your breathing for about half an hour. The half-hour that you would have spent wasting your life getting stressed out by the news, you can’t do anything about anyway, go sit in a quiet corner and meditate. You know, just take count. You know, get into your own body and take inventory and just focus on your breathing for 30 minutes. You’re gonna do far more for your health and well being, reclaim that part of your brain that this debacle has taken away from you. And the only way we get out of this is if we’re able to think clearly, right? And there’s a huge part of our brains right now that the majority of people in our society just simply don’t have access to by virtue of their feelings of fear and worry and hysteria. We need to let go of that because it’s not serving us, and it cannot serve us.

We need to be focused on really, really, really doing whatever is possible to reclaim. And by the way, it’s tremendously helpful to your immune function to do that, on top of your ability to think your way through, you know. I mean, we all have a lot to think about right now. We have a big mess, a big, big, big mess to clean up, and nobody’s going to clean it up for us. And if we’re gonna clean it up for ourselves, we have to have the presence of mind with which to do that. So turn off CNN, go sit in a corner and meditate for half an hour. Take a deep breath, exhale it slowly, don’t sigh it out, and reoxygenate your… Take the mask off when you meditate or do… I mean, every chance you get, you should be taking the mask off. And I have about 115-page report I’ll be publishing in the next few days that provides all of the most current science on that whole subject matter.

In fact, the CDC just came out just the other day with a study that showed that 75% or more of everybody that got ill, that had developed this illness and had a bad outcome with this illness, wore masks mostly or always. And we’re not just talking the cloth mask, which most people know are bad, but all of them. And in the article that I’ve written or the report because it’s quite lengthy… But I’m really thorough. Like I say, I’m very responsible with the way that I approach these things. And, you know, I even covered the subject of N95 masks, which everybody thinks is like the gold standard of protection. It’s not. It can’t be. These things aren’t designed to protect from viruses. They’re designed to protect from bacteria in a surgical situation. And from particulates from, you know, either noxious gases in some cases or particulates, particularly with respect to, like, dust and smoke and things like that. But they don’t really protect from respiratory viruses. And they actually can do more harm than good in that regard. So, all of the evidence will be provided. And there’s an enormous amount of information.

Katie: I mean, we’re running, unfortunately, to the end of our time but you’ve given so many resources, and I know you have so many on your site. I’m gonna keep an eye out for the mask report as well. But also, I’ll make sure I’ll link directly to all the other ones you’ve talked about and also to your programs. We didn’t have time to get into… I’ll make sure to link to them at wellnessmama.fm.

Nora: I keep forgetting, I actually have a business. Yeah. So, I do have a couple of, you know, educational programs. I do have a year-long, you know, 52 weeks certification course, that is a huge number of practitioners, including medical doctors and naturopaths and chiropractors, but also just average persons who are wanting to take a deeper dive into various subjects related to health. I’ve never gotten a bad review about that course from anybody. They all say, “Oh my God, I’ve never seen this much information. It’s amazing.” Also, I have my program, my most recent program, the most requested program I’ve ever had by my audience called “The Primalgenic Plan.” It’s a three-week meal by meal total health transformation program. And it’s focused on adopting a more optimized ancestrally-based and, you know, ketogenic way of eating.

And it should be… Just in quick passing, you know, there is absolutely nothing more…no dietary approach that’s ever shown a greater protection against influenza-like illness than a ketogenic dietary approach. Something about a ketogenic dietary approach that influenza-like illness does not like at all. But there as many different ways of approaching that is there are people claiming to practice it. I’ve taken the painstaking steps of optimizing this for as many people as humanly possible. And so “The Primalgenic Plan,” I’m, you know, happy to offer your listeners 30% off for that. And, you know, I’m sure you’ll have a link on your website as to the code that people can use on your website in order to access that discount for this next month so, you know, through the end of November.

Katie: Yeah, I’ll make sure to put it at the show notes at wellnessmama.fm, along with all your resources because there are so many. Yeah, and we’ll definitely put it on social media as well when this airs so people can find it directly. And like I said, our time always flies by, but Nora, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure as always.

Nora: Oh, thanks, Katie. You know, it’s such a privilege to know you, but it’s a real honor and a privilege to be a guest on your show. And I’ve really enjoyed. I’ve really enjoyed talking with you.

Katie: Thank you. And thank you as always for listening, for sharing your most valuable resource, your time, with both of us today. We’re 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.
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Katie Wells Avatar

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.

Comments

4 responses to “393: Fish Oil, Nature’s Real Superfoods, and Strengthening Immunity With Nora Gedgaudas”

  1. Tracy Spivack Avatar
    Tracy Spivack

    Katie,
    Is Nora an Infectious Disease specialist, a statistician? She is speaking as one. She is a Nutritionist. She doesn’t state this as she is weighing in on Covid. My Mom had Covid. I saw it first hand. Shame on her. This is why people don’t trust these alternative podcasts. You particularly don’t question. It is so disappointing
    to a Mom that is really trying!

    1. Sahra Avatar

      Wow the way Nora is speaking so righteously about areas outside her expertise. This was a bad episode. I’m wondering why Katie doesn’t push back a bit on Nora’s claims. Like the Argentina thing – correlation doesn’t equal causation. It seems like she cherry picks information to fit her narrative – something she says she is so vehemently against she does herself. Another hypocritical thing she does is fear monger, she says that these news corporations just scare and stress us out (which does have some merit I agree) but she communicates it in this alarmist way saying our brains are gonna shrink, etc. This is why I had to move out of these intense health online spaces. It’s enough to induce orthorexia and cause more damn stress. I still am trying to be healthy and heal so that’s why I came back to Katie because I like and trust her but this episode just was irresponsible and weird. Nora is not an infectious disease specialist like the above commenter mentioned and her claims are dubious and questionable, she should stick to nutrition or whatever her background is, especially when making such weighty claims. Have lost some trust and respect for Katie after this one unfortunately

  2. Paula Avatar

    Here we go again…contradictions on what I have learned and heard on Wellnessmama’s podcast! Ms. Gedgaudas explained her option, and supposedly evidenced base claim on food sensitivites and more, causing me to spin my head with confusion and frustration that what I’ve learned to be possible in other Mamawellness podcasts are now being deemed FALSE!

    . I wish Katie would speak up and debate sometimes. I am growing very tired of listening to the podcast because it seems, although Katie has such great intentions with hosting guest with important information, she does a very poor job standing up with evidence to claims guest sometime make.

    Im going to pull the plug on MAMAWELLNESS once and for all. But I will continue to buy her wonderful toothpaste and shampoo.

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