The Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition

99. A Survival Guide to 200+ Food Allergies and Sensitivities w/ Kathlena, ”The Allergy Chef”

In this episode, we're interviewing someone who just as easily could've been on a top medical mysteris show. Her name is Kathlena, and she has a story unlike any other we've shared on this podcast.

 

Kathlena has over 200 food allergies & intolerances, including most water. The members of her household also have food allergies and special diets, none of them the same. After being told she had 30 days to live, she made it her mission to help the food allergy community thrive. Three years from her lowest point, she and her team have published cookbooks, started a bakery, done nationwide outreach, developed recipes and resources, and more. 

 

If you want to hear a podcast that is as inspirational as it is educational, then this is for you!

 

You can find out more about Kathlena by going to www.theallergychef.com

Instagram: @theallergychef

 

Other mentioned websites: summitspring.com (Raw spring water from Maine)

 

You can find out more about FDNthrive by going to www.fdnthrive.com.

98. The Importance Of Taking A Break (ACTUALLY taking a break) w/ Detective Ev

In the clients we serve at FDNthrive, we see an overrepresentation of what some may call "Type A" personalities. As a Type A personality himself, Detective Ev knows exactly how this type of personality can find themselves in a state of chronic illness fairly easily. 

A recent experience made him realize what TRULY taking a break looks like, and he wanted to share the benefits he received as well as a plan for how to truly a break for YOURSELF. 

We hope you enjoy this episode!

You can find out more about FDNthrive by going to www.fdnthrive.com.  

97. Algae - Nature‘s Forgotten Superfood? w/ Catharine Arnston, MBA, BA, IINHC

Catharine Arnston is the CEO & Founder of ENERGYbits®. Her mission is to help the world be healthier naturally with mother nature’s oldest and original food- algae. Catharine graduated with an MBA from Ivey School of Business and a Health Coach Certificate from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. Her career spans thirty-three years during which she has been an international attaché for the Canadian and British Governments, publisher of an international magazine and the Founder of three startups.

Catharine founded the algae tablet company ENERGYbits® in Boston MA after her younger sister in Canada was diagnosed with breast cancer and advised by her oncologist that an alkaline diet would help her heal. Catharine helped her sister research alkaline foods and the process led her to discover the healing properties of plant-based nutrition. This ultimately led Catharine to algae, the most nutrient dense, alkaline plant in the world with vast medicinal properties unknown outside of Asia.

Catharine realized algae could have a powerful impact on the world if it was only better understood. Catharine has devoted her life to researching algae and educating consumers, athletes, wellness, spa, fitness and beauty professionals about its therapeutic, sustainable benefits. She is now considered one of the country’s leading experts on algae nutrition, a sought-after speaker at wellness conferences and a frequent guest on podcasts and television.

You can find out more about Catharine and ENERGYbits by going to www.energybits.com

You can also find them on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/energybits/?hl=en

You can find out more about FDNthrive by going to www.fdnthrive.com. 

96. A Quick PSA For Managing Mental Health And Stress During The Holidays w/ Detective Ev

Hi folks, Detective Ev here!

For all too many, the holiday season, a time of year that is SUPPOSED to be fun and joyful, can actually bring on a ton of stress for so many of us. Worse yet, for those suffering with clinical mental health issues (as is so often seen in those dealing with chronic illness), the holiday season can be downright debilitating.

Well, I've been on both sides of this for sure, and so tonight's episode is a short and sweet PSA. A reminder for how we can all truly get back to enjoying this season, especially after the wild ride all of us have been on during the last year and a half+.

Thanks for listening, and I hope you get some use out of this episode.

You can find out more about FDNthrive by going to www.fdnthrive.com. 

95. Triumph After Tragedy w/ Steve Baum, FDN-P, CHEK |||

In what is arguably the most heart-wrenching episode of the The Health Detective Podcast to date, our guest tonight, Steve Baum, will teach you exactly what it means to persevere. 

Steve has been helping people get into the best shape of their lives for almost 40 years.  

When he was a kid, he idolized a boy that he thought was ripped and muscular, and he wanted to look like him. Then, on a family float trip, he took his shirt off, and the boy said, "OMG, you have tits!"  

Steve could think of nothing else but transforming himself and getting lean and muscular from that moment on. So, he talked his parents into buying a weight set and devoured the muscle mags, following every program he could find.  

Fortunately, his parents didn't want him to hurt himself, and they hired a professional to work with him.  This person taught Steve how to lift weights and eat right to reach his goals.  

Learning from a pro had an immediate impact and set the stage for the rest of his life. After that, fitness and nutrition became his passion at 14 years old.  

At 16 years old, Steve started coaching and training clients.  He got certified as a personal trainer by the American College of Sports Medicine. Then, he went on to earn certifications from The National Strength and Conditioning Association, The National Academy of Sports Medicine, Poliquin Strength Systems, Cross Fit, The Aerobics and Fitness Association of America, Precision Nutrition, Metabolic Typing, Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, Performance Enhancement Therapy, and The CHEK Institute.  
 
In 1997, Steve moved to Scottsdale, AZ to open his dream training facility, including an incredible gym and a state-of-the-art physical therapy clinic.  
 
While in Arizona, he got married and had a beautiful baby boy named Steven Austin Nicholas Baum. Being a dad was a whole new ball game! Austin followed him everywhere and was always around the gym, even in diapers!  He taught Steve what unconditional love was all about. 

In 2004 Steve and his family moved to St. Louis, and he opened a new gym. Then, in 2010, tragedy struck, and he learned the definition of the word "persevere." He faced the most significant battle any parent could ever have to face, the death of his precious little boy.  
 
The stress from this had a devastating impact on Steve. He became so exhausted that he could barely get out of bed.

Steve gained over 70 pounds in less than six months, and regardless of how healthy he ate or how hard he exercised, nothing he had learned up to this point was helping him.

He went from doctor to doctor searching for answers, only to hear everything looked fine and maybe he was "depressed."  He knew deep down something other than depression was causing his issues, but he couldn't figure out what.

That's when a colleague introduced Steve to Reed Davis and Functional Diagnostic Nutrition®.  Reed had Steve run some functional lab tests, and he finally identified some weak links in his metabolism that were causing his health issues.  Correcting these helped Steve get back into the best shape of his life. After that, he knew he could use FDN to help other exhausted business owners and entrepreneurs regain their health, so he became a certified FDN practitioner.  

In 2020, Steve decided to sell his gym to focus 100 percent on functional health coaching.  

Now, he's using all of the tools he's gathered, including FDN, to help other entrepreneurs and professionals identify and correct their health issues.   

Steve is also happy to report that he's happily remarried and has an awesome wife who's a great mom to FIVE kids and a soon-to-be certified ADAPT health coach. Together they're helping burned-out professionals increase their energy, lose stubborn fat, and get in phenomenal shape so they can create more success and live life instead of feeling like zombies.  

Steve has given our audience both his personal e-mail AND phone number. They are sbfitness@mac.com and 3142653503, respectively. 

You can find out more about FDNthrive by going to www.fdnthrive.com. 

94. How Antibiotics and Anti-inflammatory Agents Impact Mental Health w/ Detective Ev

In today's world, particularly in western society, you'd have a tough time finding someone who has never taken an antibotic or NSAID (things like Advil or Aleve) in their life. In fact, not only would it be hard to find someone who HASN'T taken those things, it'd be fairly easy to find people who take one or both REGULARLY.

But, do these things impact mental health? Well, the studies suggest they both do, but in completely different ways. That's right, one of these classes of drugs seems to worsen mental health issues, while the other seems to temporarily help them. 

In today's short and sweet episode, we're talking all about which one does what, and what this means for the mental health epidemic we are facing as a society.

References:

1. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/publications/hopkins_medicine_magazine/medical_rounds/fall-2016/a-link-between-antibiotics-and-mental-illness
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26580313/
3. https://bigthink.com/health/depression-relief/

You can find out more about FDNthrive by going to www.fdnthrive.com

 

93. Using Light to Heal, and Why Sunscreen Is Bad w/ Anna Crescitelli, Holistic Esthetician, IINHC

On this episode of The Health Detective Podcast, we have our first ever live and in-person recording! Like most of the team at FDNthrive, Ev is lucky enough to know a lot of amazing people in the holistic/functional healthcare space, including in his hometown.

Our guest today, Anna Crescitelli, is a holistically-oriented, licensed esthetician in Pennsylvania. She graduated from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition at only 18 years old, and is also trained in both macrobiotics and herbalism. She started studying holistic health when she began following in her "hippy mom's" (Anna's words) footsteps at the age of 12! 

She is the founder of An's Plants, an all-natural and organic skincare line designed to support your skin WITHOUT damaging it. 

An and Ev have been great friends for awhile, so they took a much more conversational approach in this podcast. We hope you enjoy this fun back-and-forth, as well as a change in pace from our norm!

You can find out more about Anna on her Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ansplants/?hl=en

You can find out more about FDNthrive by going to www.fdnthrive.com. 

92. Audience Questions Answered - Blue Light Glasses and Living Up North In Winter

Hey there folks, Detective Ev here!

In this episode, I'll be responding to a couple of audience questions we recently received. The two primary things we'll be addressing are what blue light glasses we recommend, as well as what someone can do in terms of getting proper light exposure during winter if they live in harsh, northern climates. 

If you just want to get the answer to the blue light glasses question, then just listen from the beginning. If you only want to hear the answer regarding what to do for light exposure in winter if you live in a harsh climate, then skip to 11 minutes and 37 seconds.

Product Recommendations:

Blue light glasses:

1. https://raoptics.com/
2. blublox.com
3. https://luciaeyes.com/

Light Therapy Devices:

1. Sperti vitamin D lamp: https://www.sperti.com/product/sperti-vitamin-d-light-box/
2. Red light/NIR panels: https://platinumtherapylights.com/
3. Red string lights: https://midwestredlighttherapy.com/product/red-string-lights-very-low-flicker/

You can find out more about FDNthrive by going to www.fdnthrive.com.

91. The Importance of Eating Seasonally w/ Detective Ev

The vast majority of humans live in place where there are seasons. With these seasons come changes in food, temperature, and exposure to light.

All too often, due to the demands/expectations of our modern worlds, depsite the dramatic changes in our environment, NOTHING about our LIVES change!

We have a house or apartment that is the same temperature (plus or minus a couple of degrees) year round. We throw on the TV and overhead LEDs when its dark early on a winter's night. And, as is the topic of today's episode, we eat the SAME FOOD year round! in fact, we often eat even worse around the times where our body is least equipped to handle such food (the holiday season).

So, is it important to eat seasonally? And, while we're on the subject, what DID human beings really eat, anyway? All that and more is talked about in today's episode!

You can find out more about FDNthrive by going to www.fdnthrive.com. 

90. Ketosis, Sunshine, and Healing Humanity w/ Dr. Courtney Hunt, MD

Despite her impressive background, including her UCLA Obstetrics and Gynecology Residency, Dr. Courtney Hunt, MD, found herself at a loss when both her and her husband were dealing with autoimmune conditions. The things that she had been taught during her medical training helped mask some symptoms at best, but never got her anywhere close to the point of being truly healed.

How could this happen? Shouldn't someone who, statistically, has more knowledge about the body than 99% of people be able to fix just about anything? It turns out, she couldn't. And, with this realization, Dr. Hunt went back to the drawing board to rethink everything she knew and had been taught.

In this episode, we are talking to someone who just may be the most knowledgeable guest we've ever had. You will not only learn about how she healed, but also how she started connecting the dots of a much bigger picture involving the entirety of humanity. 

How did this OBYGYN turn into someone on a mission to heal the human race? You'll just have to tune in to find out. But, when you do, don't forget your notebook!

About Dr. Hunt:

Dr. Courtney Hunt has spent the majority of her career as a board certified OBGYN helping women, mothers, and their children deal with 21st Century illnesses that current medical textbooks fail to address. Most of these illnesses arise from our changing, modern environment. After many years delivering babies, Dr. Hunt grew tired of seeing mother after mother, and woman after woman, come in feeling exhausted, foggy, achy, and sad. Worse yet, she grew concerned about the growing number of sick children these women were bringing in with them; children of all ages. Dr. Hunt herself was a busy delivering obstetrician and operating gynecologist and has spent years translating that expertise into figuring out how to make surgery and pharmaceuticals less necessary and lifestyle more important in the path to wellness. She began to study nutrigenetics many years ago when she started to realize that the majority of her pregnant patients were nutrient depleted and grew concerned over the impact this could have on the fetus. 

 

Since childhood, Dr. Hunt had a desire to become a physician, especially when at the age of 13 her grandmother developed ALS also known as Lou Gherig’s disease. This motivated her at age 17 to attend The University of California at Berkeley as an integrative biology major with a focus on reproductive endocrinology, genetics, and neuroscience. She graduated from medical school at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine at 25 and completed her residency at UCLA, ultimately administrative chief resident. 

 

 After practicing for one year in California, at 29, she moved to Arizona. After working with a large OBGYN group, she opened her own practice, Desert Jewel OBGYN, in 2005 as the founder and medical director. It was in this practice that she saw an increase of patients that suffered from chronic fatigue, autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, horrible perimenopausal symptoms, Hashimoto’s, vertigo, migraines, memory disorders – and the more she saw, the more they came. These were patients who had previously been ignored by others, undiagnosed, misdiagnosed, or had only been given band-aids for their symptoms. In an attempt to better understand those patients and their symptoms, Dr. Hunt utilized her knowledge in genetics to develop a deeper understanding of human DNA how it interacts with environment, lifestyle, and food choices. In addition, her husband was diagnosed with Celiac Sprue shortly after they were married. A childhood disease that was missed in him despite numerous doctor’s visits until well into adulthood with almost catastrophic ramifications. This spurred her to deepen her knowledge of the gastrointestinal tract and the affect our food choices as well as the microbiome have on it and it’s connection to our brains. 

 

On this journey, Dr. Hunt was forced to look outside of what she had been taught in medical school and residency and look deeper for answers. This lead her to the pursuit of nutrigenetics. As an early adopter of BRCA cancer gene testing over 20 years ago, she realized that if we could see the genes that predict cancer we could also see the genes that will could heal us. A roadmap for healing, if you will, an instruction book for the body and it’s environment. 

 

All of Dr. Hunt's Links/Book:

www.instagram.com/courtneyhuntmd

www.instagram.com/geneticprotocol

www.courtneyhuntmd.com

www.geneticprotocol.com

www.geneticprotocol.store

https://www.amazon.com/Your-Spark-Light-Mechanics-Creation-ebook/dp/B096NL1JW7

You can find out more about FDNthrive by going to www.fdnthrive.com.