The Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition

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.

89. 3 Things To Reset Your Internal Clock FAST!

With daylight savings around the corner, it's important to know how we can maintain our circadian rhythms, or at the very least, fix them back to normal ASAP. And yes, even though this timechange is typically considered the "good" one, the truth of the matter is, each timechange does in fact take it's toll on the body.

While its arguable that we never should mess with nature and change our manmade clocks at all, we definitely don't have the power as individuals to make that decision just yet. So, the next best thing is to listen to this episode!

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

Links:

 

1) Camping study - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-week-of-camping-can-turn-you-into-a-morning-person-22006398/

2) Himalayan salt lamps: https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Home-Improvement-Household-Salt-Lamps/zgbs/hi/5759978011

3) Amber readling light: https://www.amazon.com/iGoober-Rechargeable-Blocking-Brightness-Bookworms/dp/B07X2XX7WD/ref=sr_1_5?crid=1HRJD0RDHPT21&dchild=1&keywords=no+blue+light+reading+light&qid=1635819403&s=hi&sprefix=no+blue+light+reading+light%2Ctools%2C79&sr=1-5

88. How Trauma Is Secretly Keeping You Sick w/ Skye Gallagher

Have you ever talked to someone who just blew you away because you could tell that they had TRULY "done the work?" The person that has actually worked through the dark parts of their life that very few are willing to venture to? 

Well, today, we're speaking with one of those people, and her name is Skye Gallagher!

If you're looking for an episode that gets real and raw about the truths regarding trauma, how trauma affects the body, and how we can learn to acknowledge it and work through it, then this episode is for you.

About Skye:

Skye is a former Equinox trainer & online health coach with 12 certifications, and since then, has turned marketing agency owner and now business coach. Skye’s health challenges lead her to study how certain emotions affect our function, both in terms of health and business. Skye is obsessed with helping people transform, and does this by creating mental models that help people live their dream lives and have their dream businesses! She studied why people change when she was a trainer, and now applies that to helping health coaches sell at their dream prices, using her method of paradigm shifting marketing.

You can contact Skye directly by direct messaging her on Instgram. @skyegallagher. 

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

 

87. Vitamin D Supplements For Winter? Think Twice... w/ Detective Ev

Here we go again! As the fall season is in full-swing, and with winter right around the corner, people will be buying more and more vitamin D supplements. The question is, is that really the best way to get vitamin D? More importantly, did you know there are some notable, not-so-positive effects that vitamin D supplementation has on the immune system? In this short and sweet episode, we talk about why you may want to think twice about supplementing with vitamin D this winter, and the best alternative if you decide you don't want to. You can find out more about FDNthrive by going to www.fdnthrive.com.  1) https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/720815

86. Why We Don‘t Use ‘xyz‘ Lab Test w/ Detective Ev

In the world of functional medicine, it can be very easy to fall in love with one specific lab test, maybe a couple of tests at best.  The reason this seemingly works is because, if you run the same test with enough people, naturally, SOME will present with clinically useful results. But, what about the many that DON'T show up with any useful information? After spending the past weekend with Reed Davis, founder of FDN and FDNthrive, Detective Ev gained a fresh understanding of exactly WHY we do things the way we do. And, afer listening to this short and sweet episode, you'll fully understand why, too! You can find out more about FDNthrive by going to www.fdnthrive.com.