Homesteader Mindset with Elizabeth Bruckner

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:11] Speaker B: What's worthwhile healing mind, body, and spirit. I'm Ramsey Zimmerman. I choose peace of mind, vitality of body, and joy of spirit over stress, exhaustion, or overwhelm. Together, let's explore and pursue the many ways to build holistic health and wellness. [00:00:31] Speaker A: And so when you just look at what homesteaders, traditional homesteaders were doing, they had this incredible healthy lifestyle that didn't take as much time as we think. And it's. It had all these magical health properties that now we've got studies about like, oh, fermentation and all it does and, you know, home cooked meals and lack of. Lack of chemicals. It's like, oh, my gosh, I'm doing the home alone face for those of you that are not watching. It's like, oh, my God. Like, all right, my toe and I are getting a little crazy right now. I'm getting a little. [00:00:57] Speaker B: I'm gonna have to step back a little down. Put some castor oil and vinegar dressing on your toe and you'll be good. [00:01:06] Speaker A: All right. Disclaimer. Do not put castor oil in your salad dressing. You're gonna get so many hate mails with, like, pictures of exploded toilets. [00:01:14] Speaker B: You said it. I didn't. [00:01:16] Speaker A: I didn't say it. [00:01:20] Speaker B: Hey there. It's Ramsay here. That was Elizabeth Bruckner. Elizabeth works with clients to develop glowing mental health by incorporating the five element theory from traditional Chinese medicine into hab creation. She has also written a book called the Homesteader Mindset to transform the way we view self sufficiency in our lifestyles. And she's hilarious. Her poor toe. She had injured it just before we spoke, and its pain and recovery was the topic of much conversation and big laughs. What I found amazing about Elizabeth was the novel and fascinating way she seamlessly integrates homesteading, fermentation, and Chinese medicine in her mind. Now it almost all fits together in my mind too. See how it falls together for you? Let's get rolling. Hey, Elizabeth, how are you doing today? [00:02:08] Speaker A: I'm doing great today. Besides my stubbed toe. Life is good. [00:02:12] Speaker B: Oh, man, I just hate a stubbed toe. What's going on with your toe? Why did you stub your toe? [00:02:17] Speaker A: Well, I had a couch jump out at me. It was actually my couch. It was a train couch and it did not adhere to its normal training and jumped out in front of me and stubbed my toe while I was trying to tell my say goodnight to my dog. [00:02:32] Speaker B: Wow, that's impressive. Well, I wanted to introduce you. I'm excited to have you here today because not only Are you a couch trainer? But you are also an acupuncturist practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, and you've gotten way into homesteading and you're also adept at the science and art of fermentation. But I really want to know what happened to your toe and how is. [00:03:01] Speaker A: Your toe doing so many things. I do so many things on top of couch training and rescue dog training my toe. So last night I stubbed my toe and I thought that it was going to be fine. I thought that it was just a kind of an uncomfortable thing. But then as I went to bed, it started to throb and swell up and I thought, oh, and like the good holistic practitioner that I am, I knew that I could put something on it. I was going to try to sleep through it, but that did not work. So I went to the rest the bathroom and I got some castor oil. Have you heard of castor oil packs and what they do? [00:03:38] Speaker B: You know, castor oil, it just. I can't decide, like, is that the nasty stuff that you drink or is that the TW40 that I put in my car? [00:03:48] Speaker A: It is definitely. It has been known for the nasty stuff that you drink. And if you drink it, friends and family out there don't do it without medical supervision because it is a. It's a poop, Lester. It will just clean you out, out, but in a very violent way. It's in a. It's super violent. So there are other traditional Chinese medicine herbs that you could use that will be a little more gentle. I typically recommend using castor oil topically because it's much more gentle. It can help with digestion, but it's much more gentle. And it. Actually, there's been some studies to show that it cleans your lymphs. It's really remarkable. Anyway, so a castor oil pack. To go back to my toe story, let's give my toe some attention. The castor oil pack is where you take a. Like a piece of cloth, either cotton or wool that's not dyed, you put some castor oil on it, and then you wrap the affected area with the castor oil pack and then you throw something on top of it so that your sheets and clothes don't get all gooey. Because castor oil is super. It stains, like, hardcore. [00:04:45] Speaker B: You're really selling it. [00:04:46] Speaker A: The castor oil, it's cheap and it's really good for you. Okay, I'm going to get to the selling part. I always like to, like, preface it with, like, this is how horrible it is. And now let me tell you why I go through this process, because there is something good out of it. So I put it on, and within two minutes, the throbbing and the pain stopped. And typically, a stub toe doesn't cause me any issue. But this one I knew is probably sprained, possibly, you know, broken or something. Something wasn't right, and the pain went away. Like, castor oil is fantastic for pain. The next morning, I woke up, the throbbing was gone, the swelling was gone. It was black and blue. It looks pretty gnarly, but it was happy. I took the castor oil pack off and thought, well, I think I'm done. And then within 20 minutes, my swelling came back, and I okay, my body's telling me it needs a little more castor oil. So the reason I love castor oil, and if you haven't had the guest on Queen of Thrones, she actually produces castor oil. She's a really neat lady, and she has great stories about castor oil. I recommend her for you. Typically, castor oil has been used as a beauty product. They say Cleopatra used to use it. It's great for your skin. I use it on my skin, and it has helped reduce sunspots and things. But what I've been using it on a lot with myself and patients is reducing chronic pain. So if you put it over liver at night, it actually helps your liver detox. And if you've got, like, leaky gut and you've got toxins in your body, a lot of times they settle in your joints. They settle. They kind of build up. And people, you know, doctors will say they don't know why this is typically, it's because of the lifestyle that we live as Americans. Like, it's not the healthiest lifestyle. We're inundated with toxicity, and so this is a good way to flush those toxins out. And so after 30 days of putting castor oil on my liver, my chronic back pain, which was quite, quite difficult, has reduced tremendously. It might also be just a little question mark for those that have had this. It might have been caused by an epidural that I had. So epidurals do have side effects, and they don't talk about them a lot. But castor oil is fantastic. I love it. And now my toe loves it, too. [00:06:50] Speaker B: Wow, that is far and away the best toe story that I think I've ever heard. [00:06:58] Speaker A: How many toe stories have you heard now? [00:07:01] Speaker B: Let me think. [00:07:02] Speaker A: Probably. [00:07:03] Speaker B: Probably about one. [00:07:04] Speaker A: Okay, well, I'm glad it's not the worst one that you've heard no. [00:07:09] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I guess statistically speaking, yeah. All right. But you're into homesteading. And when I hear homesteading, I get visions of like Little House on the Prairie and stuff. Is that what we're talking about? Are we talking about something different? [00:07:25] Speaker A: Well, okay, so there's two types of homesteading. The modern day homesteading, which is what I do because a lot of people think of homesteading and so did I. As like, you make your own clothes, you've got a pitchfork, you, you know, you, you don't have a neighbor for miles. You're shooting off bears to keep them out of your garden. And that's. There's no bears in Southern California. We do have coyotes. Keep your cats inside. But I have a pitchfork. But I don't make my own clothes. I live in the suburbs. There's lots of sidewalks, lots of telephone poles. And so I realized that when I found out about homesteading, which I did accidentally, I realized it was much different than what my perception was. Homesteading initially happened back around 1862 with the homesteader Acts. And what that did was the federal government granted over 270 million acres of land to private owners. A lot of the rich got richer, by the way, but there were a few people that got the 40 acres and a mule. And that's what people typically think of homesteading. Now. It is a mindfulness practice. It's a mindful way of living sustainably and it, it has many spokes to the wheel. You can reducing toxic load in your home, which again I was doing accidentally I was doing, but not knowing I was homesteading. You can create a healthy gut microbiome by eating nutrient dense food. You can close some of those loops like a lot of times Americans for sure. Me, up until my 40s, I outsourced a lot of my food and my happiness. And it wasn't until 2020 when I went to the store and noticed that the shelves were bare because people were panic buying that there was no ginger and garlic. And I also panick. I thought, wow, I can't believe this is happening in my country. Like, I come from. My mother's side are a bunch of war refugees. My mom was a refugee here at the end of World War II. And so I had stories of famine and poverty, but I had never seen it. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I lived a very charmed life in America, which most of us, many of us have. And so when I saw this, I thought, oh my gosh, what are we going to do? And someone wise Once told me years ago that the best prescription for anxiety is action. And so my husband suggested that we start growing our own food. And then I kind of blinked slowly and said, do you. You know who I am, right? Like, I kill every plant that we've ever had. I was notorious for killing plants. I spent so much money going to the garden store and saying, please give me something that I can't kill, and then coming back with my head hanging in shame two weeks later and be like, please, can you give me something else that I cannot kill? And so I started just plant murderer. I was. It was terrible. And I have, you know, now, as a gardener, like, something's got to go. Like, you do have to. You have to call things in your garden. You have to rip stuff out that's not going to be good for your garden. But back then, it was like I was killing these beautiful green souls every day and then going back for more. And so when I started using YouTube to teach myself, I would stuff, do stuff like, what do you grow in Southern California? How do you grow food? And people kept mentioning homesteading. And so I started embarking upon this sustainable way of living and doing it in a way that was slow baby steps. And because I'm such an enthusiastic learner, when I learn something, I oftentimes teach it. It's just my. It's just my mo. I wrote a book about it. [00:10:48] Speaker B: Best way to learn something is to teach about it. [00:10:50] Speaker A: That's right. [00:10:52] Speaker B: These are scientifically proven facts. [00:10:55] Speaker A: Is that so? I didn't know that. [00:10:57] Speaker B: I mean, it's a. It's a well established cliche. I think there's a lot to it, though. I think, you know, in terms of learning something, because once you start teaching it, you have to not just understand how you understand it, but then you also have to figure out how other people understand it so that you can express it that way so you really know it inside and out. [00:11:18] Speaker A: If you're teaching it, that's kind of like podcasting. Right? Don't you think that as you're podcasting, you're learning more about the world? Like, your knowledge is deepening when you're meeting with guests and then having your solo episodes? [00:11:32] Speaker B: Absolutely. I mean, probably one of the biggest reasons I podcast is so that I can have in conversations with really interesting people. [00:11:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:41] Speaker B: Like, I mean, I could just call you up out of the blue and be like, hey, do you want to spend an hour talking about homesteading and acupuncture? But then it just would have been random. It's like, okay, but I mean, who are you? [00:11:53] Speaker A: And that would not be creepy at all, Ramsey. But I think better way to do it. [00:11:58] Speaker B: Yeah. As if podcasting was not creepy by its very nature. It's like, okay, let's create a conversation and then have an unlimited number of eavesdroppers invite people to eavesdrop on our. [00:12:10] Speaker A: Oh, I never even thought about it that way, but it's so true. I think, for me, I started doing the podcasting game to promote my book. And then what I realized is that I love talking to people about real conversations. I don't know about the eavesdropping thing. That might make me a little nervous. So for all you out there, let's all be friends. Let's just all be friends. [00:12:29] Speaker B: Hey, you. You were invited. [00:12:32] Speaker A: You're invited to. You can comment. If you really want to give us some feedback, you can comment. But, yeah, that was the most surprising thing about podcasting, because I was nervous initially when I started doing it a few years ago. And then I told my husband, like, this is fantastic. You actually get to talk to people. Not about the weather. Like, oh, my gosh. Because small talk is my kryptonite. So. [00:12:53] Speaker B: Yeah, well, yeah, you get to dig into subjects, and I get to think about things and ask questions. Like, why, as an acupuncturist, did you get so excited about homesteading? Like, are those two completely different things? Or in your world, do those line up? [00:13:11] Speaker A: They do line up, because when I wrote the book, everyone. Typically when you write nonfiction, it's a good idea to have an avatar, like the. The ultimate ideal reader. And my ultimate ideal reader was one of my patients, because patient compliance is very difficult in the medical fields. So people will come in and they'll say, please, can you fix me? And I'll put in some needles, and their body heals themselves. But then when I give them homework, it felt like there was not a lot of compliance, meaning they just couldn't get around to it. They'd come back in, they'd be like, no, I didn't have time today. Or, my life is so busy, I want to feel better. I know that this XYZ that you've recommended is a good idea. It's a good practice, but I don't know how. And so when I wrote the book, I wrote it specifically for my patients. It's a book for all people, but I wanted it to be something that when my patients say, I really want to eat better, but I just don't have time. A lot of the three myths that I hear a lot are, I don't have time, it's too expensive and it's too complicated. And so I wanted to take each one of those and break them down and make it possible for people to create routines that are inexpensive, that don't take a lot of time, that are actually created in found time and that are super simple. So I took all of my practice, my medical practice, and then my language learning journey, because I started learning languages in my 40s and fell in love with this idea of creating routine as opposed to utilizing willpower, because willpower is finite. I mean, any athlete will tell you that, like, you have to have a routine, you have to get up and do the next right action kind of without thinking. And so I used a lot of the ideas from Atomic Habits, which is a great book, and I just translated it into Homesteading. How can you change your life with teeny tiny habits and make it something that is sustainable, that's good for your family and you, that's good for your mental health, your physical health and your community's health. Health. [00:15:06] Speaker B: So what are some examples of things in homesteading practices in homesteading that are connected to personal health and that are healthy to do? [00:15:18] Speaker A: Oh my gosh, there's so much I will say. One of the first things that I started doing years ago, before I even knew homesteading was a thing, was just changing out plastic containers for glass containers. In my house. There's this movie from the 90s called Benny and June and she had all these mason jars lined up and that was like her decor. And I was like, that is so cute. And so I started buying mason jars to house my leftovers. And what I was doing was I was getting rid of the plastic residue that was touching my food. Like, you know, you have hot soup, you put it in a plastic container and then you take it to work or whatever that plastic is, it's malleable. It will, it will change with, with heat and it can change with acid. Like, let's say you're vinegar in it, it's going to change and some of that plastic is going to get into your food. And so I didn't do it for health reasons. I did it because I wanted less plastic in the world. And, you know, as I'm sure you know, because you're in, you have a background in sustainable energy. This idea of just buying stuff in plastic and then recycling it, because that's not a problem. Well, the recycling world is a dark, dark story. And so the best thing to do is, is just not have plastic in your home, like buy in bulk, use glass containers. So that was my very first stop and what that was doing was reducing toxicity. [00:16:39] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I have this memory of. So yeah, I used to be in sort of the sustainability world for a long, long time. And I have this memory of some folks who you know, wanted to reduce, reuse and recycle and had like all of this like a shelf full of old yogurt containers that she was using as like drinking glasses. And just looking at that, looking back at that, I just cringe because it's like, you know, you're putting, continuing to reuse the plastic and you know, those especially, you know, 20 years ago or whatever, the plastics were not designed to be necessarily all that stable with things like you said, like heat or acids and whatnot. And so then it's a question. So like they were trying to get ahead of the whole even having to recycle it by reusing it. But then what we've discovered recently, I think is that even as we recycle it, it's the microfibers. So you know, you're recycling the plastic bottles, the pet, you're upcycling them into clothing, which is terrific except that every time you wash your pet clothing you got microfibers coming off into the water. And now those microfibers are bio accumulating in us and in animals, in nature. It's like ah, can't win. [00:18:12] Speaker A: It's true. And once you, once you see it, you can't unsee it. So my husband and I, I would say 90% of our clothes are natural fibers. And it does take some time. Like this. Even what I'm wearing now is cotton. It's just cotton. And it takes some time to figure out. It's kind of like when you go shopping to find good food. Initially, it's the first few times you're like, oh my gosh, I gotta read all the labels and all the stuff. But eventually you find the thing that has three ingredients that you can eat. And now you know, you go to the store and that's what you get. Or you stick in the, you stay in the produce aisle because now you know how to cook a little bit and so you can create this delicious stuff. Like I, I don't know if you are old enough to remember this Ramsey, but do you remember Shake and Bake? [00:18:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:56] Speaker A: So it was the seasoning. It might still be around, but it's this nasty seasoning with like 800 ingredients. You put it in a plastic, like a light, easy to Denature plastic bag. You take your raw chicken, you shake it in it, and then you bake it. And the other day, I made chicken, because that's one of my favorite fast foods, is baked chicken. And I put cumin and chili powder and pepper and salts and a little bit of chicken fat on it, and I put it in, and when it came out, I'm like, oh, my gosh. This tastes better than shaken bake. Because I was raised, I was amazed. [00:19:31] Speaker B: At a really high bar, too. [00:19:32] Speaker A: It's so sad. Someone once made. This was years ago, before I cooked. They made this delicious salad dressing, and I was like, wow, that tastes better than Olive Garden. And I remember her looking at me like, oh, you poor thing. Like, that's. That is your high bar. But let me tell you, Shake and Bake and Olive Garden, they're using. [00:19:49] Speaker B: Dressing is so good. [00:19:50] Speaker A: It's so good. And, like, what chemicals are they using? Because they're making it taste. [00:19:55] Speaker B: I'm pretty sure it's crack. [00:19:56] Speaker A: I think it is. I think shake. It has a little bit of heroin in it, but it's. It's this. You know, that's what my palette was raised on. It was raised on artificial foods. Like, they weren't food. They were artificial. And that's. And it was going for good flavors. And you had mentioned in, I think, the episode on Joy that good food tastes really good. Like, real food is easy to make. It truly is. And it can taste amazing. It can make your toes curl. Let's go back to. Let's do a little call back to My toe can make your toes curl when you have really good food, you know? [00:20:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Just don't curl your toes too much right now because you might hurt yourself again. [00:20:35] Speaker A: No. My poor toe. [00:20:37] Speaker B: Put some castor oil and vinegar dressing on your toe, and you'll be good. [00:20:42] Speaker A: All right. Disclaimer. Do not put castor oil in your salad dressing. You're gonna get so many hate mails with, like, pictures of exploded toilets. [00:20:51] Speaker B: Said it. [00:20:52] Speaker A: I didn't. I didn't say it. [00:20:54] Speaker B: I didn't say it. Yeah, so many. Many disclaimers. [00:20:58] Speaker A: Yeah, Many disclaimers. But that's the tr. Like, the truth is, when you say, what do you. What is homesteading? To me, it's just healthy living. And it happens to go back to. Hearken back to the traditional skills that we lost. Like, my grandmother used to. She was. Again, she was an immigrant. She knew when she got land, she got a cow. Like, she was renting land, and she got a cow because she Knew she was going to feed her babies and she raised chickens. But by the time I was bor. And that was done, like, none of my mom was solely. Both of them were working a lot. I was a latchkey kid, and we just ate cereal all the time. It was all processed food all the time. And so when you just look at what homesteaders, traditional homesteaders were doing, they had this incredible healthy lifestyle that didn't take as much time as we think. And it had all these magical health properties that now we've got studies about, like, ooh, fermentation and all it does. And, you know, home cooked meals and lack of. Lack of chemicals. It's like, oh, my gosh, I'm doing the home alone face for those of you that are not watching. It's like, oh, my God. Like that. Like, just. Just the way that we word things, right? Conventional fruit versus organic fruit. That's not conventional. There's nothing conventional about putting poisons on your. Okay, all right. My toe and I are getting a little crazy right now. I'm getting a little. I'm gonna have to step back a little. [00:22:13] Speaker B: I need you to calm down. Oh, but talk to me about fermentation. Fermentation is just like magic, basically. But you like to call yourself a fermentation maven, right? [00:22:24] Speaker A: I do, and it is. Well, I'll that if you did call me randomly and say, I want to talk about fermentation, most people would think that was creepy. I would be like, let's talk about fermentation. Like, I. If I'm at a cocktail party and someone mentions that they like sauerkraut, it's game over. Like, that's what they're going to hear for the next hour. So I was healing from a chronic illness, and I was bedridden for. For weeks, homebound for months, and then unable to work for a few years. And during that time, it started with, I couldn't do anything right. I was just bedridden. But when I was homebound, I was like, I'd really like to be useful to my family. How can I do that? And I happened upon. Well, fermentation can increase the vitamin content in your food. It has these incredible microbes that will help your gut. So let's talk a little bit about gut, right? Because you have a few episodes, which I recommend listeners, if they haven't heard them, go back to. Because the gut is just. It's really your first brain. A lot of people say it's your second brain, but it's really your first brain. And if you keep all of those happy beings in there happy and balanced, then your life becomes better. So an example would be when I first started healing my gut with fermentation. And I use the. Have you heard of GAPS Gut and Physiology Syndrome by Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride? So it's this, it's this neurologist. She was a Russian neurologist that immigrated to England and became a nutritionist as well. Well, and so I think she's got double doctorates and she healed her son from autistic tendencies through diet alone. And now he's a healthy, functioning 30 year old. And I learned about her as I was on my healing journey. And one of the things is it's all, I mean, if you read the book, if you did a drinking game and drank kombucha, every time she said you need to heal and seal your gut, you would be very kombucha out because that's all. It's like each chapter is kind of independent, so you can kind of take it apart. But it's like, yes, yes, heal and seal the gut. I get it, I get it. But it's true. It's so important. And so the first two weeks that I was on this protocol, healing my gut with fermentation and meat stock and real food, I remember I started sleeping much better. So I had never considered myself an insomniac, but I did know that I was very jealous of my husband because as soon as he hit the pillow, he would start snoring immediately. And I'd be like, how are you sleeping right now? [00:24:49] Speaker B: It would take me insult to injury, right? Sleeping and snoring. [00:24:53] Speaker A: The worst part is when he'd wake up and be like, I don't think I slept that. And I'm like, don't. I don't stop. [00:25:00] Speaker B: Normally. [00:25:01] Speaker A: Right. That is not an awake noise. So what I realized was I, I typically what happens is when I heal, then I go into finding out why that happened. I kind of reverse engineer what happened just now. And what I found out is that there's a lot of imbalanced micro microorganisms in your body that are nocturnal. So if you are not sleeping, there's a good chance that your bugs are keeping you up. And when we talk about these bugs, like, don't get too grossed out. The truth of the matter is we have more cells that are mic. That are microorganisms than our human cells. So you can, when we talk about like shifting DNA and, oh, it's just in my genes, I'm just, I'm Going to be diabetic? Because everyone else in my family is diabetic. No. You have so much control. Because if you can control those little beans, which you absolutely can, with food and healthy exercise and acupuncture and other holistic. Holistic modalities, you can control them. You can control your life. You can do miraculous things if you are able to heal your gut. So that's my take on. On fermentation. [00:26:04] Speaker B: You blew my mind when you said that some of your microbiome is nocturnal. Yeah, like that. That just sort of. It's like, wait a second. So they wake up when you're supposed to be sleeping. Are you saying that that is related to why and how a lot of people have trouble sleeping? Neighbors inside their gut are partying and they are not sleeping? [00:26:29] Speaker A: Yes, that's exactly right. Now, in Chinese medicine, It was created 6,000 years ago. They didn't have the terms microorganisms, but they did a lot of observing in nature to figure out what was going on in the body. And so I'm going to do that with you right now. Like, think about the insects in your garden. There are some insects and animals that are only nocturnal. They only wake up in the evenings, and they're usually the cleaner upper. They're the ones that come and they munch on everything. Like those tomato worms, those hornworms. They come and they eat your tomato plant. And then in the morning, you're like, what happened? But if you go out at dusk when it's nighttime, you can see them and you can pick them off. The same is true in our bodies. Those, a lot of the cleaner uppers, they're not bad. Like, you know, you're supposed to have eboli in your gut. What? What? No, this is stuff that helps you break down, like, in balance. This helps things break down. Like Candida. We talk about candida overgrow. It's very important to say candida overgrowth, because you will see people that are like, okay, I'm just gonna take an antibiotic. I'm gonna get rid of all the microbes. And that is the worst thing you can do, because then the imbalance comes back. And now you've got the good guys doing bad things because there's just too many of them. And so you need that balance. Once you can do that, just like in your garden, you add the ladybugs to eat the aphids, or you invite lizards to come and eat some of the bugs that are going to. To, you know, cause problems. And then you've got A healthy ecosystem within your body. [00:27:58] Speaker B: But you don't want to have the non native species come in though, because then you have unintended consequences. [00:28:07] Speaker A: Oh, you mean like in your, in your body? Well, this is talking about in your garden. [00:28:14] Speaker B: In your garden. You got me thinking about like native landscapes and about how the, you know, the, the genius of man and the is to hey, like let's take this animal from this part of the world and let's bring it over here because I'm sure it'll just eat all the bad things and nothing bad could possibly happen from that. [00:28:38] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I mean that's not what you meant. [00:28:41] Speaker B: But that's where my mind immediately went. [00:28:42] Speaker A: Well, it's true. I think, you know, there's been a lot of talk of goats. Like people have been getting goats in certain. I think it's. Was it Australia maybe it was parts of Scotland where they were just letting goats overrun and they were like, oh, this is great, they're eating all the brush. But then the goats had no predators and then they were overpopulated. It's same with the deer on the east coast. Like if the deer's like we used to say, oh, hunting is bad, but hunting actually helps the population of deer and it helps impoverished people actually eat. So there's this, there is an eco balance and you don't want to introduce like what did they do? They introduced predators into a place that didn't have. They recently introduced wolves I think in Colorado and they're like killing all the dogs and stuff. It's. You have to be really careful. And the beautiful. [00:29:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I think the lesson here is, is natural balance, right? Finding, maintaining, restoring natural balances instead of in unnatural balances. And like I remember when I was a kid it was all the rage to treat my acne with years of antibiotics. I don't know, Black, I'm thinking that's probably not. [00:29:58] Speaker A: It's. Well, no, I am a medical practitioner. I will tell you that handing out antibiotics like candy is not a good idea. It's doing just what you said. It's introducing a wolf into a population. The antibiotics going to kill everything into a population that doesn't have something to help it. So I'm not against antibiotics if you need it. Like if you have a life threatening emergency. I'm not against medicine, but I will say I am against over prescribing of medicine. And a lot of times we're seeing that it happened in my life it was every four, four times a year, every season I was given antibiotics for My chronic bronchitis, which may have been like a childhood asthma that was going on, it was going undiagnosed. But they just kept giving me pills, giving me pills. And, and it just kept creating an incredibly sick gut microbiome. And from that I wasn't able to absorb food as well as I did. Now the beautiful thing about fermentation is that it's doing the opposite. It's just like you said, it's honoring nature. So what I do is I take a cabbage, for example, and I cut it up and I put some salt in the cabbage in a bowl and I let it sit overnight. And the bacteria that's already there, the bacteria that is fed bodies for years and years and years, lactobacilicus is going to be created and the salt is going to keep any of the rotting, bad moldy stuff out of it. And then what happens is you do create this ecosystem outside of your body. And then, you know, traditional homesteaders were doing it simply because they didn't have a refrigerator. But magically it was actually this incredible medicinal. And so you can heal your body just by letting the vegetable do what the vegetable needs to do, do well. [00:31:46] Speaker B: And it's, it's, it's kind of a mind blowing concept of eating things that are alive and not even killing them in the process of eating them. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:00] Speaker B: So if you're eating so fermented foods with active cultures are alive and they're energetic from the fact that they are alive. And so are we talking about food as like a transport medium to bring living things inside of our universe, to inside of our bodies, to occupy our internal universe? Is that kind of what we're talking about now? [00:32:25] Speaker A: We're really deep diving. [00:32:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:27] Speaker A: Well, in Chinese medicine, every food, everything that you put in your body has several different energetic properties. So we will say that mint is cold and pepper is hot. And it doesn't necessarily mean that it's cold to the touch or that it's cold when you taste it. It means that it will actually cool off your body. So if someone has inflammation, what we would call like stomach heat, where they're hungry all the time because their digestive fire is too strong, we would give them mint to slow that down, to cool it a little. But if someone like me back when I was ill, was too fatigued, too tired, very pale, not a very strong pulse, I wouldn't give my cell and slow digestion, I wouldn't give that patient mint because it's too cooling. It's actually going to harm the body. And so instead we might do something like something that creates more yang in the body or more invigorating. One of my favorite Chinese herbs is ginger, because it's very neutralizing, what we would call now adaptogenic. It kind of adapts. If you need a little more heat, it'll give you heat. If it needs cool, it won't give you cooling, but it won't overheat you ginger. That's why you can have ginger if you kind of feel nauseous, or you can have ginger if haven't gone to the bathroom, which might be caused by cold and one might be caused by heat. You could do ginger either way. And so again, through observing. So there's a. There's a myth. I don't know if it's true. I don't think that it is, that the masters in herbs would take every single herb and then meditate and see where it would respond in the body. And even now, my husband is also an acupuncturist. If we're tasting something new for the first time, we'll often go like, oh, where do you think that's going in the channel channels? Like, rosemary, from what I know is not a Chinese herb, but I use a lot of rosemary because it grows like weeds in my garden. And we were talking about it, we're like, oh, yeah, it's definitely an open orifice, because when you taste rosemary, it's very aromatic. Right. It kind of. It kind of wakes you up. You could see it getting rid of mucus. Yeah, it's an open orifice. It's probably a little lifting. So I probably wouldn't give it to my patients with high blood pressure on a medicinal level. But in my simplein, which is just water with a little bit of herbs, it tastes great, and it's really good for your flavor body. [00:34:36] Speaker B: So then how does this relate to the idea of chi, which I don't really understand. But what I do think that I might understand is that it's. It's. It's energy, and it's like force of will. But if we have this microbiome inside of our body, and we have all of these living creatures inside of our internal universe, is their activity, their work, is that related to change? [00:35:04] Speaker A: That's a really good question. I don't think, because they didn't talk about microbiomes and microorganisms in Chinese medicine. I do have a hypothesis that has not been proved. But firstly, let's talk about qi breaking here, folks. Yeah, it's breaking here. And then all of the acupuncturists will, like, riot in the world. It hasn't been tested, but it's something that I have talked about with a few acupuncturists. And I'm like, oh, that's pretty interesting. So the first thing is, let's talk about what chi is. Chi, when it's written in. In Chinese characters, is actually a bowl of rice with steam coming off of it. And the chi is the steam. And what they're trying to tell you is, number one, it's elusive. You can see it, but you can't see it. You can't hold it. It's really hard to measure. How do you measure steam? Right. So all of these things are just to explain to you that even In Chinese culture 6,000 years ago, they too were like, what is Chinese chi? There's a few things. There's form and function. So we can see what chi does in our body. When someone is energetic and they have, like, strong heart chi, they will laugh very easily. They are very talkative. They might be a little more red than most people. If it's. If it's an imbalance, then it could go a little harder. Like, you can. Have you ever heard of someone that laughs, like, really inappropriately? Like, why are you laughing right now? And almost kind of like a fit. That's their. Their heart chi. The heat of their heart is too high. So that's. That's the function of chi. Right. But then the form of chi, they would say the heart chi, in terms of its form is the qi that holds our heart together. So then if we go down to the anatomic level, like all of these little electrons and protons just like, you know, spinning around the nucleus, they didn't know that, but they knew something was holding it together, and they're calling it chi. Now, in terms of your question was. What was your question? Question? [00:37:02] Speaker B: Well, I'm just curious on how that relates to the idea of having this microbiome and having all of this energy from all these little critters. [00:37:11] Speaker A: Yes, thank you. You got me back on track. So here's my very new pardon me, hypothesis. There are five spirits in Chinese medicine, and they're the shun for the heart. The shun kind of the spirit houses in the heart, the hun houses in the liver, the E houses in the sky spleen, the po houses in the lungs, and the jur houses in the kidney. And each one of them has a different aspect to it. So the shun in the heart is the emperor of the Heart, the hun is the emperor of the soul. In the spleen, the E is for intellect. And in the lungs, it's the corporeal soul. And then lastly, your willpower comes from the kidneys. So the jur comes from the kidneys. My hypothesis is, is that these, these five spirits, often way back in dinosaur time when I was in grad school, my professor would often say, you know, sometimes these will try to kill you, like they will. You'll. Your spleen, your E, the intellect. When you're studying, you'll really want sugar to keep it going. And then you'll eat sugar until you get diabetic. And I was like, I don't understand how a part of me could want to kill me. How is that possible? But it wasn't until I learned about the gut microbiome that I realized that microbes can do a lot of crazy things. You know, even there's viruses and bacteria that can make you more daring and more suicidal. You know, there's a particular. I think it's a virus that will infect an ant, and it will cause the ant to crawl up to the top of a. To crawl up to the top of a tree blade, bite on the top, and then. And then leave its legs dangling in the air so that birds can come and eat them. And this is a virus that causes them to do this insane thing. So if that's possible, I think that our spirits are also affected by the gut microbiome. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? You never heard of that? [00:39:10] Speaker B: Ants, like hanging off of a leaf to get eaten by birds on purpose. [00:39:15] Speaker A: Suicidal ants. [00:39:17] Speaker B: Well, well, it's. It sounds either like, you know, what is it? The last of us? The. The science fiction of, you know, being taken over mind control by fungus and, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah, but that's a really interesting concept. So, you know, we know that a lot of times cravings hit us, right? And cravings can come from a number of things. It can be like an addiction, whether you're, like, addicted to sugar or caffeine or cigarettes or whatever else. But then you can also get cravings from the candida overgrowth, I think that is like sugar, sugar, we need more sugar because that's what they want and that's what they're telling you. And we know that, you know, the vast majority of the connections between your gut and your brain go from your gut to your brain. So your gut is definitely telling you what it wants, what it needs. And so, yeah, that's really interesting, the thought that Essentially, the spirits are just another way of talking about the influence of our microbiome. We know that they directly manufacture chemicals that get into our body. And when they're doing well, they're producing our neurotransmitters for us, or at least the precursors to our neurotransmitters, transmitters. [00:40:45] Speaker A: So, yeah, yeah, there's a lot that goes on in terms of our body. And addiction is a really. It's a tricky thing because some. It' sit's got a number of things right. We've got the behavior, the behavior that becomes addictive. It's. Let's just talk about sugar, right? It's comforting to come home after a long day of work and have a chocolate bar or have your ice cream that's in the fridge. And you've. I often say metaphorically, sometimes when our life is not sweet enough, we crave some sweet. When our life is not savory enough, we crave savor. You know, we're craving fulfillment. We're craving. And so I often recommend to my patients, like, make sure that your life is really sweet. And you can do that in tiny little increments. I have one friend that I was talking to her about self care and the idea of bringing tiny bits of joy into your life, tiny bits of sweetness. And she's like, I found it. I found what I do. I'm like, okay, what do you do? She goes outside for 30 seconds with a cup of tea and she watches her succulents grow because each day they're slightly different and it's. She's bringing sweetness into her life. And for me, when I make veggie juice in the morning, I used to drink it at the counter and then off I'd go. And then I started going, no, I'm going to sit down and reset my vagus nerve by petting my dog. My dog loves it. Like he's getting some attention that I'm usually on the go. And instead I took, you know, maybe a minute to have a little bit of a sweet moment in my day. So that if the rest of the day is crap, at least I've had one beautiful moment. And you can create, you can link those moments together and then you're not metaphor craving sweetness. So we've got the behavior, we've got the need for fulfillment, and then on top of it, we've got candida, which is, it is potentially one of these spirits that are telling you you need this sugar and you will get withdrawal symptoms if you have incredible Candida and you're not able to get out of that. And some of those are like headaches, nausea. I was addicted to sugar in my 20s, totally addicted. And then I went off of it. And I saw an incredible change in my landscape. My blood sugar levels, my moods, my stability. I didn't need to sleep as and I snuck it back in before I became a homesteader in using processed foods. They were organic and they were shiny and glittery. They were in glittery boxes that said it's, you know, compostable box and isn't this great? And look how happy these cows are on the, on the box. But yeah, it was still outsourcing my food. And so what I realized in the first few days of eating nutrient dense food, animal fats, animal proteins, I remember feeling this satiation in this incredible calm and thinking, oh my gosh, I've been starving myself, myself for. I was a vegetarian for 27 years. So I had been starving myself for more than 27 years because I wasn't eating well in my teens. And here I am having real food and my body is responding with calm, clarity, purpose, fulfillment, health, so that I can be of service to my fellows. And when we talk about meat, I'm sure you would agree that we're looking at regenerative agriculture. We're looking at animals that are treated well. It does cost more, but it's so important to vote with our dollars and to have less meat. I have one friend that' a chef in San Francisco. She's like my husband and I eat less meat, but we eat high quality, well cared for meat. And you can absolutely do that in your lifestyle. [00:43:52] Speaker B: Yeah, we purchase beef from a local rancher and you know, once a year or whatever and keep it in the freezer. And we also have a lot of wild caught fish. We're in the Pacific Northwest in Seattle area, so lots of opera opportunity for salmon and good fish. So we do a lot of that. And I know I feel great after I eat a big cheeseburger. Always have. Never an issue for me. [00:44:33] Speaker A: And you know, it's not even nowadays. We've got farmers markets that are bringing in regenerative ranchers. So in our farmer's market, I do get most of my meat from a farmer that I know. Like he knows my name. I know his name. I've visited some of the farms that make my eggs and my chickens and. [00:44:50] Speaker B: I know that name. You know the chicken's name. [00:44:53] Speaker A: That's right. [00:44:53] Speaker B: And you know that lots of friends. [00:44:55] Speaker A: Yes. And they're. And because of that, they're healthy house. And I was taught in my teens, which is why I became a vegetarian, that it was unethical to eat meat because the. And truly it is unethical. Factory farms are. They're, they're terrible what they're doing and they're creating a lot of disease and so that's unethical. But there are other ways to get nutrient dense food and to promote animals being loved and honored for what they are here for and also having good lives and helping our bodies stay healthy and energetic and vibrant and able to be of service. [00:45:30] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think there's a lot to that. And how do you sort of apply all of this? What do you help people with? What kind of services do you provide? You mentioned a book that you had written. But, but how do you sort of wrap all this up for people and where can they find you and how can they get ahold of you? [00:45:54] Speaker A: Well, they can find me at my website, which is www.createwellnessproject.com. i do a lot of holistic health coaching that centers around gut health, creating sustainable lifestyle. But I also recommend getting the book because that's a really good start in terms of figuring out what you want to do because your spoke might be different than my spoke. Like I probably will never sourdough bread. I just don't have a need. Our baker makes incredible 48 hour fermented. It's not pot, it's not necessary. So you might have some ideas that you've been wanting to do for a long time and this book will help you get that. It's the homesteader mindset. It's available on Amazon or anywhere else you get your books. And then also I have a free gift for your, your listeners, for all those friendly eavesdroppers, those that are listening in with us. We've given you full permission to hang out. It is a habit tracker and it also gives you three easy steps for how to create a hab habit that is sustainable and not so big, but can actually change your life. One little habit can change your life. And you can get that at my website by going to www.createwellnessproject.com gift G. [00:47:05] Speaker B: I F T. Fantastic. Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much. There's. I think it's really terrific how you have, have sort of taken the, you know, the training, the, the philosophy and the application of the traditional Chinese medicine, the acupuncture specifically, and then reframed it and applied it so to so much of a broad way that people can organize their own lives and you know, do so many things for themselves in terms of practices and growing food and fermenting food and the fact that it all works together for mind, body and spirit. And that's what I'm really into. And I just had a blast talking to you. This was really fun and I do hope that your toe feels better. [00:48:07] Speaker A: Thank you, Ramsey. This was wonderful. Thank you for having me. [00:48:10] Speaker B: Yeah, you bet. Where to go from here? Visit whatsworthwhile.net to learn more about me, Ramsey Zimmerman and please reach out to me and let me know what you think. I don't want this podcast to be some message in a bottle thrown out to sea. I want to hear back from you. Please send me a message or an email or hit me up on X, LinkedIn or Instagram. And please leave a rating and review for the what's Worthwhile podcast on Apple, Spotify, Iheart, or Amazon. Thanks.