Let's Talk Wellness Now

Cheryl Meyer and Dr. Deb discuss how environmental toxins impact our health and have the potential to cause autoimmune disease. Dr. Deb talks about the tests you can run to see if you have toxins and Cheryl shares tips on changing your environment easily and quickly to reduce the toxins you are being exposed to every day.

Do not miss these highlights:

[4:46] Cheryl’s signs of her toxic load and after being told that there physically was nothing wrong with her, she started to research functional medicine

[10:35] How her book is a layman’s roadmap to everything she learned along the way

[11:29] A practical strategy for starting to decrease the items in your household that are contributing to your toxic load

[13:16] Utilizing the Environmental Working Group website as a searchable resource to check the toxicity of your products

[15:13] Carcinogenic herbicides are still being used on our foods which is just another support to make the move to organic foods

[18:16] The exposure to environmental toxins that are occurring outside of the food we consume

[22:32] A look at genetic testing and the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase mutation and its impact on toxic loads

[26:00] Using a belly button wand for healing and stress reduction

[29:07] Tips on how you can start your detox journey today

[35:45] Eliminating foods from the diets of children and encouraging them to make healthy choices when it comes to food

[43:27] A closer look into how autoimmune disease and toxicity are linked together

Resources Mentioned

Environmental Working Group – https://www.ewg.org/

Great Plains Laboratory – https://www.greatplainslaboratory.com/select-a-test

Gain access to a searchable library of health tips and strategies with Dr. Deb – https://debra-s-school-1b7e.thinkific.com/courses/serenity-u

About Our Guest:

Cheryl Meyer has an autoimmune disease. She eliminated toxins and reversed her pain.

Cheryl has a BA from UC-Berkeley and is a health coach from IIN. Cheryl is an award-winning author,

international bestseller, health coach, speaker, local tv host and guest podcaster. Her book, It Feels Good to Feel Good, Learn to Eliminate Toxins, Reduce Inflammation and Feel Great Again has won 15 awards.

Cheryl has her own podcast on RHG TV/Voice America. It Feels Good to Feel Good, Futureproof your

Health. Her podcast is now heard in 80 countries. She also has a local TV show on Community Television

in Monrovia, CA on KGEM.

Toxins are everywhere and impacting our health and the health of our children. Eliminate the toxins now and don’t wait until you get sick and tired.” She adds, “It’s all about toxic load. Each toxin that is

eliminated is one step closer to health.”

She specifically works with clients with chronic illness giving them hope and helping them find solutions.

It is never too late to start healthy habits.

Cheryl is available to speak about her 2-3 minute exercises to eliminate their stress and improving their

productivity or about toxins in our world that are making us ill. Cheryl has participated in 18 summits

and is a sought after expert on toxins, toxic food, toxic cleaning, toxic water, toxic minds, including toxic

stress and toxic lack of sleep. She also talks about the impact of toxins for our children and our pets

health.

Contact Cheryl for one on one coaching at cherylmhealthmuse@gmail.com. Eliminating toxins is a

crucial step to regain wellness.

Cheryl encourages you to listen to your body and to own your own health.

Social Media & Website:

https://cherylmhealthmuse.com

https://heavenlytreepress.com

https://www.facebook.com/cherylmhealthmuse/

https://www.facebook.com/It-Feels-Good-To-Feel-Good-reverse-inflammation-1277191688990457/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/feelinggoodlivinglowtoxin/

https://www.instagram.com/cherylmhealthmuse/

https://twitter.com/cherylmhealthmy

Transcription of Episode #113:

Debra Muth 0:02
Welcome to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, I’m your host, Dr. Deb. This is where we talk about everything wellness, and learn to defy aging, and live our lives on our own terms.

Debra Muth 0:16
This is Dr. Deb, I’m your host of Let’s Talk Wellness Now. It is April 16 2021. And this is Episode 113. I’m so excited that we’ve been here for this long have all of these episodes. And today I can’t wait to share my latest guest with you: Cheryl Meyer.

Debra Muth 0:38
Cheryl is a health coach. She’s an award winning author, international best seller, speaker, local TV co host and a fellow podcaster. Her book is it feels good to feel good. And we’re going to learn today about eliminating toxins, reducing inflammation, and how to feel good again. This book that she created has won over fit teen awards. She also has a book called feeling good living low toxin in community and everyday life, which was published in May of 2020. And now has won five separate awards, I am so stoked to be talking to somebody with this kind of experience. And this kind of truth behind them. She has her own publishing company called heavenly tree press. She also has her own podcast on our HGTV, Voice America. And it’s called “It Feels Good To Feel Good”. The future proof of your health. And her podcast is now heard in 80 countries. She’s also a local TV show on community television in manohara, California, on k GM, all about toxins and how they impact our life. So I’m really excited to be talking to Cheryl today about toxins and how toxins are everywhere in our environment, and how we need to really learn how to get rid of toxins and and make our bodies feel the best that they can feel. So with that, I am going to introduce Cheryl and bring her on live so that we can talk all about eliminating toxins.

Debra Muth 2:41
I’m Dr. Deb, founder of Serenity Health Care Center. I want to thank you for joining our let’s talk wellness now podcast. It has been such a pleasure to share our knowledge. With so many people. We are averaging about 25,000 downloads an episode. And that is amazing because it’s showing us how much people want to learn about health and wellness. Outside of the health care center, we have had the pleasure of changing lives for over 8500 clients, both men, women and their children. As a result of this, I have created serenity you and university Learning Center where you can access all of my knowledge that I have developed over 25 years of practice at your fingertips in an easy to find the index library, you will have access to this dashboard 24 seven, it will be like having your own personal natural path at your beck and call. Anytime a day. I’d like to encourage you to check it out at Serenity view.com.

Debra Muth 3:56
Cheryl, welcome to the show. I’m so glad that you’re here for us today. And I can’t wait to have this conversation with you about detoxification and toxins. It’s one of my favorite topics to talk about.

Cheryl Meyer 4:08
I’m thrilled to be here and I’m obviously very passionate about toxins because by eliminating hundreds of them I went from having horrific pain from autoimmune disease, still having auto immune disease but I no longer have pain. So I am a big believer that it is more than worth the time to find out what is poisoning you that’s in your life and they are everywhere.

Debra Muth 4:33
How did you get on this journey when you give us a little tidbit here that you had an autoimmune disease. But how did you get to this journey that toxins were connected to your autoimmune disease?

Cheryl Meyer 4:46
Well, toxic load builds up for 20 years. I had all kinds of little weird things happening to my body and I just ignored them I would get random rashes or my underarm deoderant and some of them made me blush Some of them made me rash. So that became a problem my mascara. Some of it made my eyes water, some of it made my eyes itchy. There were just things going wrong with my body. And I was a business owner, I had my own jewelry business, I didn’t want to stop. So I just kept pushing through it. And it was flipping past me so quick. I didn’t stop. And then one morning I woke up and my tongue in my mouth and my eyes were swollen shut. And you would have thought that would have been the two by four. But it wasn’t. I figured out that that had been fabric softener fabric softener had been giving me rashes that a girlfriend came and stayed with me, did me a favor and did my laundry. So took a couple of days for that to go down. And I did go to the doctor and get an an epi pen because I was really in bad shape. But I still didn’t stop. And then about four weeks later, I woke up and I had horrific pain, everywhere. Every muscle and every joint in my body hurt. So I went to the doctor, she ran lots of tests. After four visits and four rounds of tests. She called me and said there’s nothing wrong with you. I said that’s ludicrous. Something is wrong. I hurt. She said, Well, I’m gonna give you steroids because you think there’s something wrong. But what I really want you to do is get mental therapy. So there’s nothing wrong with my mind. There’s something wrong with my body, and I’m going to go find it. So I turned my business over to my staff and I dug in. And as I told you, I tripped into the functional medicine community and didn’t even know that existed. And I watched 19 different symposiums with multiple doctors. And they kept they all have become functional because they gotten sick and couldn’t help themselves. So that fascinated me. And there were threads that kept running through all the information. I probably had something called leaky gut. Okay, what, what was leaky gut, I probably was dealing with too much stress. Well, I knew that was true. My friends had started pulling me aside and talking to me about it. And my cortisol was so low that I was almost Addison’s disease by the time I got to a doctor, but you know, I wasn’t sick. So what’s to do to the conventional doctor, and all these things that were happening to my body sounded like they were toxic load. So they commented several times on ewg.org. So the first thing I looked up was my very expensive French cosmetics. And they were a nine ona ten point scale, oh, my God, that I was poisoning myself right through my skin. So I went backwards. I started with food, it was logical to me that that was the most obvious place to start. And I’m in California, where we had had GMOs on the ballot. And there was so much misinformation it lost. So I wanted to understand what was organic farming wasn’t worthwhile, what was conventional farming and what were GMOs. I now pretty much only eat organic because I don’t want those toxins in my on my food. And in my body, I don’t need to be poisoning myself while I’m giving my body nutrition. And I slowly began to eliminate all of the processed food, because all of those ingredients that I can’t pronounce and don’t know what they are also poisoning me. And MSG is now in processed food under 39 different names, we all know MSG is bad for us. But oh my god, it’s being hidden in there. So I started changing how I ate. I was in a relationship where I woke up and he said, I don’t like it that you’re sick. So I knew that that toxic relationship probably wasn’t good for me either. So he went, I started learning little tiny exercises that I was doing every day to let the top off my stress before it became chronic. Little things like even just standing and bouncing next to my chair for three minutes, I would feel the blood go up to my brain and I would get clear and I would be more productive. Whereas I thought stress was good for me before that I thought it was making me more productive. And so I learned the Dr. Andrew Weil breathing exercise and that’s my go to. My functional doctor, which I did find two and a half years later who yes confirmed that I have autoimmune disease even though conventional medicine didn’t know that. I do Dr. Andrew Weil breathing all the way out to her office and in LA traffic so I have the best blood pressure and the best pulse of any patient she has because I’m resetting my parents sympathetic nervous system all the time. So it’s not building up and it’s not causing my body havoc, and stress causes leaky gut. It impacts every organ in the body, just like sugar Her just like toxins do. So we have to take all of this stuff seriously.

Debra Muth 10:06
Absolutely. I’m so glad you’re talking about this. And you’re sharing how this kind of scenario and timeline of things that changed because it’s very overwhelming, right? When you start learning about these things, and you think you have to do everything at one time, and then we all get frustrated and just say, forget it, I won’t do anything, because I can’t make all these changes at once. But all of these changes come as you learn more things, and you get successful at one,

Cheryl Meyer 10:35
every single toxin you eliminate is one step closer to help.

Debra Muth 10:40
Absolutely.

Cheryl Meyer 10:41
So I tell my book is about how did I research? What did I find out? It’s a layman’s roadmap to everything I learned along the way. What is the health coach? What does the functional doctor What does auto immune disease, but I lay it out like a layman because I MLM and I want people to hear it from a layman’s point of view. And then the people who go oh my god, I can’t do this? Well, Sure you can. It took me five years. So I did a workbook that as you find things in your life that are toxic, that I found were toxic, and you write it down, you’ve been using it all this time. If it’s really tough, you put it in a bin, you take it out to the garage, and you only bring it in when you have to use it, when you run out of it, you replace it with something much lower in toxins, it doesn’t have to be overnight. But you do need to get rid of them. Every time you’re going to buy a new product, don’t buy the old one, buy something that’s going to lower your toxic load. And I have found some incredible products that do that. But write it down so that when you’re going to go to the store, you’re going to replace things, then you buy lower toxic items all the way along, it’s not going to break the bank, you’re not going to be spending any more money than you were all along. But you You’re the probably the most fascinating thing I’ve found out is your body celebrates when you start to do this, my body is very smart. I had no idea. And when I started eating better, and I started eating organic, and I started eating all the phytonutrients in the rainbow. My body started saying to me, yeah, I’m feeling much better keep going. Because that’s what gets you to continue down the path of the continuous eliminating all the toxic. Yeah,

Debra Muth 12:29
you’re so right, you know, when you when you’re toxic, and you don’t have the energy and you don’t have the mind to to learn these things or do these things because your brain fog or focus and concentration issues, things like that. It feels overwhelming. But as you start feeding your body, what it needs from a nutritional standpoint and start cleaning things out, it’s so much better and your body will rise to the occasion. And then you’ll have the energy and the desire to go deeper. I think that’s so important. I want to touch on something you had brought up the Environmental Working Group, can you talk a little bit about who they are and what they do, because they’re such an amazing organization. And I think everybody should have them, you know, favorited or bookmarked on their computer,

Cheryl Meyer 13:16
great information to support them, because I’m very grateful for all of the research that they’ve done. Ewg.org is the Environmental Working Group, you can look it up either way. And they have researched hundreds of 1000s of ingredients. And it’s not the most user friendly database in the world. Although it’s gotten much easier than when I started this nine years ago. Sometimes your whole product is in there and you just have to look it up and you’ll get a rating. Sometimes you look it up ingredient by ingredient. I interviewed someone for my podcast as an environmental specialist and she said start at the bottom, because that’s the littlest ingredient and as you go up the list when you find something toxic, then you know you’re gonna want to replace it. And that’s when you put it in the bin and you get it out of your house because it offloads toxins in addition to when you use it, but you can find everything you can find the Dirty Dozen clean 15 which is what they’re the most famous for. If it’s on the dirty side of that card. If you say you can’t afford to buy all organic start there. If it’s on there, it could have as many as 72 chemicals on it. Some of which are neurotoxin, some of which are killing our bees. We have no bees, we have no food, but you and strawberries are number one I kept going strawberries. Yeah, strawberries are number one because they’re low to the ground that we spray them a lot to keep them away from bugs. But I strongly recommend you start there and then you progress to eating more organic food. Because whether it’s on that Dirty Dozen side or not, if it’s somewhere in the in between where the clean 15 is Over on the other side of the card, you don’t need what it’s given to your body, you only need the good phytonutrients when it’s grown correctly without the toxins, without the herbicides and without the pesticides. And one of the big herbicides that used on our crops was finally disclosed to be a carcinogen two years ago. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr, was part of the legal team and he got them to cough up that they knew it was causing cancer for 20 years. And yet, it’s still being sprayed on our food. So if you don’t realize how, why it’s important to eat organic start with that thought, because you don’t want that. And organic is better for you there, it’s better for the earth, we get more minerals from the food that comes up through organic farming. There have been a lot in the beginning, they said there was no difference. Now there’s lots of studies that prove that there are. And so if you’re going to start anywhere with toxins, I strongly recommend you start with food and you stop eating processed food, because all of those things you can’t pronounce them don’t know what they are doing your body harm, and they’re loaded with sugar, and sugar, interrupts everything in your body, it interrupts all your feel good hormones, it interrupts too little hunger hormones, I had no idea. All my life, I beat myself up that I didn’t have willpower to lose weight. I don’t diet anymore. And I’ve dropped 60 pounds. I mean, I’m eating real food, and my body’s happy. And I read once that if I was heavy, I was starving my body that made absolutely no sense to me. While my body was holding on to every little nugget of nutrition it could get because I didn’t want to give it up. Because I was starving my body, I was feeding my body fake ingredients. If that’s you, when you stop eating the processed food and all that sugar, these two little hormones, which are Guerlain and leptin, they turn on. And all of a sudden, you realize when you’re hungry, and you don’t want it anymore, I have no desire to go into the kitchen, and eat a whole cake anymore, slice by slice, because I don’t want it my hormones are doing their proper job. And my body.

Debra Muth 17:19
that is so true, you know, and just from the aspect of eating clean food. And the toxins, you know, when you start eating clean food, you get the toxins out those toxins store in your body fat. So when you’re exposing yourself to a lot of toxins, you’re going to create more body fat as a way for your body to protect you from those toxins so that it doesn’t damage your kidney and your heart and your liver. And so once you start moving those toxins, you can start getting rid of some of that body fat. You no longer need it to protect you either.

Cheryl Meyer 17:53
It doesn’t happen overnight.

Debra Muth 17:55
Right? You’re not going to drop 20 pounds in a month. Yeah.

Cheryl Meyer 17:59
It starts to leech out little by little, you’re not making any progress. Well, you know, you didn’t get this overnight. And it’s actually funny a while to come back into balance but keep eating all the great foods that support your body because it will happen.

Debra Muth 18:16
Yeah, you know, even little things like when I started learning about this 25 years ago already, you know, just making a simple choice. Like you don’t buy the for breeze plugins anymore. And you do essential oils, if you want something to smell nice in the house. Just a simple transition like that can make a huge difference. Those types of things are so loaded with toxins, our kids are breathing them, our grandchildren, our animals,

Cheryl Meyer 18:43
-takes them out of the air

Debra Muth 18:45
is Yeah, it’s Yes, it’s horrible. I mean, little things like that can make a big difference. You know, even just think about laundry soap, right? You don’t think about it, because you’re just washing your clothes, but you’re wearing your clothes for 20-24 hours a day, if you’re wearing pajamas at night, and you’re laying on sheets. And so those toxins are against your skin all day, every day, 365 days a year. And so that those kinds of little things can really make huge improvement.

Debra Muth 19:18
and when she’s smelling her laundry and go ohmy god, she’s poisoning her body every time she does that.

Cheryl Meyer 19:25
Exactly. And you know, we forget that skin is our largest organ. And so we absorb a lot of things we think that it’s only what we breathe in but it’s really not our skin is huge. I mean just think of Body Lotion For instance, you know, the all the body lotion companies that you go to I don’t want to say their names because I don’t want anybody to get upset but um you know, the bath and you know what’s some of those places people love but the majority of the people that you talk to can’t tolerate going into the stores because the smells are so strong and they’re all you know, mixing with each other. But those things that we lather on our body is so toxic when you can make a simple blend of coconut oil and other essential oil. And that can be your new body lotion. And there’s no toxins involved in it at all the some of these things are so simple to do. We just don’t know about them.

Cheryl Meyer 20:26
And one of the fascinating things missions I have I mean, they’re I’m always finding toxins to eliminate that eliminated literally hundreds. I don’t have body odor anymore. Yes, if I have a little bit of body odor, it makes me stop and think back. What did I eat yesterday? Where was I? What was toxic that was around me? Yes, because my body now reacts with body odor. But I had such a horrible time even finding a deodorant that would work more than a month because it’s a terrific body odor. It’s gone, the breath is gone. The bad breath, all of that has cleared up. So you don’t need all that stuff to smell good anymore. And yes, I do use a lot of lavender essential oils.

Debra Muth 21:11
Yeah, two really great tips for that. You know, you mentioned one body odor is a big one. The more body odor you have, the more toxins you have, because the body’s trying to get them out. The other thing is for people who sauna, the longer it takes you to sweat in your sauna, the more toxic you are, as you get cleaner, you’re going to sweat faster in there. So that is another really good way to determine how toxic are you.

Cheryl Meyer 21:39
But for me, that’s not true. I have never sweat. Really. Oh, my doctor went I think you have mthfr

Debra Muth 21:47
Yeah, and you’ve got a mutation issue.

Cheryl Meyer 21:49
I think I inherited from both parents, both my parents died of diseases that were connected to it. What it means is I’m very low on natural full eight. So I take the vitamins to try to keep that up. But I have a hard time holding my B6. And so it’s a constant struggle to detox. Yeah, my body. Just it’s something that is something I inherited my DNA. And I will tell you, in most cases, habits run in families, diseases don’t run in families. But this one has stayed with me. And it just means I have to be aware of it. And and so toxins for me are even more dangerous because they go in and I can’t get them out.

Debra Muth 22:32
Yeah, that is a really great point. I hold that same mthfr mutation passed it to one of my children as well. But, you know, when we look at genetics, this is where genetic testing can be so crucial. And some of the big genetic companies like 23andme used to do a great job at giving us detoxed genes, they don’t do all of them so well anymore. They don’t do all of them anymore. So that’s why they do this so well. But there are some genetic companies that look at various genetic pathways like GST, and NAC and MTHFR and COMT, and some of these genes. If you’re double mutated on all these genetic pathways, it is more important for you to make sure you’re doing the things that Cheryl is telling us because your body can’t clear those toxins. And if you can’t clear those toxins on your own, a small amount of toxic load is going to be huge compared to the next person. So oftentimes, we’ll hear people say, Well, my husband doesn’t have a problem with this. Why do I, well, your genetics aren’t the same. And so knowing what your genetics are, you can make lifestyle changes and choose supplements that help you detox better, so that you don’t have so much of a problem with things that you get exposed to even after you’ve cleaned up your environment. I cleaned up my environment, but I still use various supplements like gluto, biona, and NAC and methylated b to keep my detox going. Because I have to breathe public air, right? Things that I can’t have any control over that come from China, like my computer screens and things like that. I don’t want to have to be touching and worried about getting toxins to it. I want my body to be really good and efficient at clearing those all the time. So those are things that we can do. So some of those tests are really amazing to be able to look at to see how well do I get rid of these things?

Cheryl Meyer 24:28
Yeah, and I take glutathione almost all the time because I need the support for my liver. Yep. I don’t know what I just did three podcasts three hours on the liver because I don’t think we give our liver any love and support. Without our liver impacts every single organ in the body and it’s the number one cause of heart disease that shocked me even more than smoking. A fatty liver. You need to deal with it and it will get well but You have to give it lots of love. Because otherwise, it’s impacting your heart, your kidneys, your brain, your gut, everything.

Debra Muth 25:08
The liver is an amazing organ. It’s one of the only organs we have that can regenerate healthy tissue once it’s been damaged. But you’re right, we’ve got to love it a little bit, you know? Yeah. Nice about it, you know, it’s

Cheryl Meyer 25:22
going to do whatever it’s going to do.

Debra Muth 25:24
How often do we say, hey, Oliver, I’m really thankful for you, hey, heard, I’m really glad that you’re pumping for me today. Brain, I’m really glad you’re thinking, we just take our organs for granted. And I know that sounds a little weird to some people to, to be grateful for organs. But it’s kind of this whole idea of just gratitude in general for the gifts that we’ve been given by our Creator. So that we can function the way we’re supposed to.

Cheryl Meyer 25:51
And I’ll show you something I use for stress. This is called a belly button want I know it’s an odd

Unknown Speaker 25:58
love that!

Cheryl Meyer 26:00
we do yoga with a towel group. And then Esther came up with this. And the idea is your belly button was where you were born. You can impact every organ in your body by vibrating for you. With this one, we went to UCLA to the neurology department and watch them demonstrate this. And people’s brainwaves were all over the uses for three minutes. And they’d be completely calm.

Debra Muth 26:29
Oh, I love that

Cheryl Meyer 26:30
It resets your parasympathetic nervous system, there were a bunch of burn patients in LA and half of them were given the wand, and half of them were just given normal therapies. The ones with the one two healed far faster, and far better. Because they were impacting all their organs through their body. It’s an amazing tool.

Debra Muth 26:52
It is that is great. I love that I wrote that down. I’m gonna look that up. That’s awesome. That is so great. You know, there are there are so many ways that you could go it and for some people, if you’re listening to us, and you’re kind of like, yeah, I get it. But you know, I’m probably not toxic, I don’t have to worry about this. There is a great test by a company called Great Plains that does a chemical profile. And they measure, I want to say it’s about 50 different chemicals. I could be wrong than the number but it’s quite a few chemicals. And you can see exactly how toxic you are on all of the major environmental toxins. And you can also then see what kind of things they caused for you whether it’s neurological problems, or can it cause cancer? Can it cause problems on your organ systems. So if you’re saying there’s no way I have these toxins, do a urine test and see how clean or how dirty your body is, and then you’ll know how aggressive you need to be to change things in your life, to protect yourself so that you don’t have these kinds of problems. I mean, cancers a huge issue, we’re gonna have cancer, you know, there, we’re saying 100% of the population will have cancer by 2025. Not if we do some of these things.

Cheryl Meyer 28:11
Yeah. And that none of it well, and when I talk, people will come up and say, I got bad genetics, you didn’t get bad genetics, you have the ability to turn that switch on or turn it off, right? And so own your own health and be proactive with it. Because no matter how many people in your family have cancer doesn’t mean that you have to get it.

Debra Muth 28:32
Absolutely. That is so true. You know, that’s why we do genetic testing so that we can prevent these things from getting turned on. We can support the body what what it needs to so that we don’t see the risk of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, all of those kinds of things. You know, Cheryl, what are some little tips that people could take away today on looking in their environment and saying this may be toxic, this may not. What can I look at today to make a change right now after we get off this show?

Cheryl Meyer 29:07
Hey, well, I’d start with food. start eliminating all those things. You don’t know what they are. If you don’t know what there are, your body doesn’t know what they are either. The second place to go to is your cleaning supplies. They are so loaded with nasty chemicals and I’m concerned now that kids are going back to school because they’re even a lot of the things that the CDC recommended were very high on the ewg toxicity s soap and hot water kills Coronavirus. Don’t need to be using all these nasty chemicals. You can use hydrogen peroxide that works great and it’s not toxic. And I found an incredible cleaner called branch basics. That is so low it doesn’t even register a one on the ewg scale. It’s planted enzymes. I have pets so I love to use it like in my toilet so that they if they drink there, they’re not going to die. But I use it in my laundry, I use it to wash my dishes, because it’ll take eggs right off. And that’s always such a pain to clean, I washed my kitchen floors with it. And it’s so low in toxins that I’m not off gassing, I’m not breathing anything dangerous, and it’s doing a fantastic job at cleaning my house. So start to think about what could you replace things with, it comes in a concentrate, so it’s not any more expensive than the other ones Could you take it down to the level you need for the cleaning job. And then you use that instead of the bleach and all of the things that are in your cleaning supplies that are going through your skin and off gassing into the air making you sick.

Debra Muth 30:50
Yeah, that is such a great point. I found Grove a couple of years ago. And Grove is an online store where they carry a lot of different organic products. So you can pick and choose and you can have them sent to you on a monthly basis or three months, six months, whatever you want for however you use things, but it allows you to be able to try different things and find different things so that if your local stores don’t have it or like me, I live in a really rural area. So a lot of those organic products aren’t available to us because they only store we have to shop at as Walmart. And so this allows you to get a shipment and it’s really nice and I can use natural wipes or natural Windex type cleaners, things like that. And I can replace all of my cleaning products with products from there and even sponges. We don’t even think about that. But

Cheryl Meyer 31:43
oh yeah. They grow all kinds of cases. Yes.

Debra Muth 31:47
Yes, super clean.

Cheryl Meyer 31:50
Yet the one of the most toxic things in your house or your fabric sheets for Yes. And so I bought wool balls that need to be down. There’s no toxin in it at all. A couple drops of lavender essential oil on it. So my laundry smells fantastic. And all those toxins have been eliminated from my laundry.

Debra Muth 32:13
I do the same thing. I love those I found those wool balls a couple of years ago, I do the exact same thing and I use a lot of essential oils. So I love cleaning with like thieves oil or lemon it because I like the scent but I don’t want it overbearing. And so I’ll use a lot of those things to clean. You know, deep soil and lemongrass are great for getting rid of viruses and bacterial infections. You don’t need Lysol, you know, all you need is like you said soap and water hydrogen peroxide, hydrogen peroxide cost 99 cents at the store compared to Lysol or bleach that costs four or $5. So when we’re thinking everything organic has to cost more, it really doesn’t. If we go back to our old cleaning methods, there was nothing wrong with baking soda and water.

Cheryl Meyer 33:03
Yep. And it makes an amazing difference. And you’re better for your body. So and if you said tell me you can’t afford organic, I really recommend you take a look at your budget. are you stopping for coffee every morning? On your way to work? Do you really need to do that? How much better could it serve your body if you made a good organic coffee at home and took it with you and then saved all that money and put it towards food?

Debra Muth 33:28
Yeah, absolutely

Cheryl Meyer 33:30
30 ways to save on food and my second book for people who say I can’t do it to get that important. And you can.

Debra Muth 33:38
Really i mean when you look at it, when you’re choosing organic strawberries versus regular strawberries, you’re talking about $1 difference usually at the host unless you’re going to someplace like Trader Joe’s or whole foods or something like that, then they might be a little bit more expensive. But another really great tip for this time of year is go to the farmers market. You can talk to the farmers, most of the farmers they grow with little to no chemicals at all. They may not be organic certified because it costs a lot of money to be certified organic but they know what they’re doing. And they’re there. They’re considered natural farmers because they’re not putting those toxins on their products and things like that. But you can buy things really inexpensively. And what’s the new one that they just came out with it? Is it is it ugly foods? Is that what it’s actually called? Yeah,

Cheryl Meyer 34:26
there’s there’s ugly foods that are dry food and then there’s imperfect produce perfect.

Debra Muth 34:31
That’s what it is. Yeah. delivers to my house.

Cheryl Meyer 34:34
Yes. And they have little hiccups. I don’t care that if he’s a little more crooked than when he would be in the grocery store. They are saving food waste. So it’s good for the earth. It’s good for us. Getting all these prime vegetables, that word grown locally that would have been thrown away. Yes, money on them. And it’s fantastic.

Debra Muth 34:54
Yes, you bet. There’s a lot of really great ways that we can save and we can do it. tricks to keep us within a budget. But I want to also encourage people that when you say you can’t afford organic, can you afford being sick? How can you afford having to pay three or $400 for a prescription for the rest of your life? Or can you afford the $150,000 heart surgery you might have? Or the $30,000 cancer drug you’re going to have to take, you know, for however long you’re going to live to fight cancer, because that’s the choice that you’re making versus do I pay an extra $15 today? Or do I pay an extra $150,000?

Cheryl Meyer 35:45
Or what’s wrong with our healthcare system? So if we would all clean up the toxins then healthcare would be more affordable, because we wouldn’t be so sick. And I want you to keep in mind that 54% of our children have chronic illnesses. Yeah, I find that completely frightening. And it’s because of what we’re allowing them to eat. Yes, people tip up, my child won’t eat organic produce, they’ll do what you do. In their little pictures, they follow their parents. So you like family around the table and you eat healthy. And stop thinking about the fact that you’re depriving your child of eating that sugary treat, in terms of experiences, and take them to the farm and take them to the ranch, take them to the farmers market half a grocery shop with you teach them where their food comes from, oh, yes, make it a whole experience, they won’t be deprived. There’ll be little super veggie Rangers that are influencing their their other friends.

Debra Muth 36:44
And you can make a lot of things yourself. You know, one of the biggest problems for kids is red dye number 40. Right? toxic, huge problem, when you’re talking about behavioral issues, just take red, red number 40 out of their diet, and you’ll see a completely different child. But they you know, you can make your own fruit roll ups out of regular fruit and just dry them yourself. You can make your own homemade popsicles out of fresh squeezed fruit juice or 100%. You know, no sugar added fruit juice. You don’t have to buy all these things that these companies are creating for us that aren’t healthy. And then you can still have your kids have that special treat that you want them to have. It’s just a healthier version of it. And they’re not going to know the difference.

Cheryl Meyer 37:34
Yeah, you know, get twisty if they go with a friend and they eat something that you haven’t been feeding them. Yeah, that’s a once it’s about with toxic load. And so one time isn’t gonna hurt them. But you want to encourage them to adopt healthier habits in all areas of their loving life and know where their food comes from. put little toothpicks in avocado seeds and let them grow it or cut off the top of the carrot stick and let them grow it. Let them feel that it’s so exciting to plant pumpkin seeds and see what comes up.

Debra Muth 38:05
Exactly. You know, I’m really shocked at how many people that are in their 30s don’t understand food, like I’ve had nurses already say to me, Well, if I’m allergic to dairy, does that mean I can’t eat hamburger?And I have to go. Okay, where does our food come from? What’s a dairy cow? What’s a beef cow? What what in beef is dairy? But we don’t know because we don’t teach anybody that anymore. We have lost the basics in our lives have-

Cheryl Meyer 38:43
-been talking that when I read an article two years ago, that 7 million people in the United States states thinks chocolate milk comes from chocolate cows.

Debra Muth 38:54
Yeah. Isn’t that scary?!

Cheryl Meyer 38:57
we’ve gotten so far removed from our food sources. We are clueless where our food comes from the our bring your child up, take them to the farm. We just went out to our ranch. We have a second home in Arizona. So we went out to our rancher who has autoimmune disease. So he feeds his cows organic hops that comes from the beer manufacturer up in Flagstaff. And his wife just went back to nursing school and somebody said to her, what did you do before nursing? And she said, I’m a rancher. I only buy my meat at the grocery store because that way I know no animals were harmed.

Debra Muth 39:33
What?

Cheryl Meyer 39:35
Where do you think that meat in the grocery store came from?

Debra Muth 39:38
Yes, yes. Oh, my gosh.

Cheryl Meyer 39:41
so far removed. Not connecting the dots and your children need to understand this. And if you don’t understand it, you need to learn it with them.

Debra Muth 39:50
Absolutely. I remember when my son was younger, he was in maybe fourth grade. And so we have a farm and we’ve raised every animal there is, and my kids were all involved in 4H. So they knew a lot about food and where it came from and raising animals to process that. That’s what they did. And my son went to school one day and was totally appalled that the chicken that was served for lunch had candy Jimmy’s on it. And he went to his teacher, and he was talking to her. And he said, I don’t understand why you’re doing this. And she said, Well, because kids won’t eat chicken. Unless they’re sweets on it. And there’s stuff on it. He says, well, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, that chicken you’re serving us is grade D chicken. If I had a D on my report card, what would that mean for me, but that’s what you feed us is breed D meats. And then you expect us to eat that. And his teacher got so upset. She had the nutrition person for the county call me and say my son was being disrespectful. And I said, that’s being disrespectful that’s educating you, because you clearly don’t know what’s happening. And why the hell are you putting candy Jimmy’s on food for kids? And they already can’t think after lunch? Because they have such a crappy lunch. And then you’re what you want them to sit down and behave and listen after lunch when you just send them a bunch of sugar.

Cheryl Meyer 41:19
Yeah, and right up to the brain. And interrupts are all there?

Debra Muth 41:24
Yes. And they didn’t get it at all. And I’m just like, you guys are adding to this problem. This is not okay. And, and my poor son, you know, he just kept getting dinged because he just kept fighting with them about this. But he was knowledgeable about it in fourth grade, because this was part of our lifestyle, you know, answers. It’s a good thing they do. And there’s nothing wrong with them knowing more than their peers or more than their teachers about these topics. We have to start educating everybody again, because we’ve lost that education.

Cheryl Meyer 42:01
Yeah. And I know, we need to sit down with the teachers so that they understand. And with whoever’s making school lunches, Jamie Oliver got all kinds of trouble because he wanted only healthy foods. So yeah, served in schools. But it would make such a huge difference in how I grew up.

Debra Muth 42:21
is my husband’s grandmother was a cook in the schools for 20 years. They made everything from scratch back then. It was cheaper, it was healthier, it was better. And then now we got rid of everything. And now we have McDonald’s and Taco Bell and vending machines in these schools and process stuff. And where our kids. They’re not learning. They’re not any more knowledgeable. They’re certainly not any healthier. This has gotten to be such a problem for us.

Cheryl Meyer 42:54
And they’re not living as long as us now they’re not so what we’re doing to them.

Debra Muth 42:59
Yes, this would be the first generation that does not outlive their parents.

Cheryl Meyer 43:04
And we control this. That’s what I want everybody, I want you to own your own health. I want you to own the health of your families, because you have more power over this than you’re accepting. Absolutely.

Debra Muth 43:17
Cheryl, can you talk a little bit about autoimmune disease and toxicity and how those two are linked together? So I think that’s so important for people to understand.

Cheryl Meyer 43:27
Yeah, well, I commented on leaky gut, that was where I started, and what happens when you don’t digest your food properly. And a lot of things can interrupt it could be parasites, could be Candida, could be toxins, could be stress, certainly a sugar, and if those things are interrupting us from getting our food down to the right size particle. So it starts raming up against the edge of our of our gut lining. And it’s a great thing. It replaces itself every six days until it can’t, it gets tired, it gets overwhelmed, and eventually it just can’t keep up. So then little tiny holes get poked through the gut lining, which is what leaky gut is, then something really interesting happens, those food particles go into the blood. And our body does exactly what they’re supposed to do at screens for them and it attacks. But our bodies are so interesting that that little food particle gets mimicked to whatever part of our body is the weakest. So for me, it was my joints and my muscles, somebody else it could be their thyroid, somebody else it could be their lower intestine, somebody it could be their brain. But wherever you’re weak, that little food particle mimics that tissue. So when your body goes into hyperdrive, it starts attacking the tissue where you’re weak that it’s mimicking. And so it goes over to the liver and then it starts sending out all of these little soldiers that go attack that tissue. And that’s what autoimmune diseases you have to eliminate what’s causing that from leaking and what’s going into your blood so that you can start to re heal and not get that reaction. And then as you get far enough along, you can’t reverse it. I still have autoimmune disease, I will always have autoimmune disease. But I don’t have pain. Because I eat so clean and I live so clean, I’m not reacting to everything anymore. And one of the things I was reacting to were food sensitivities, which conventional doctors don’t even believe in, it’s a difference from allergy. an allergy, you ate a thing, your body immediate does into hyperdrive and could kill you. But a sensitivity sets up a slow burn, and I had 18 of them. So that by eliminating there’s a test for that, yeah, and if your doctor will run it, the best test is, in my opinion, from Genova. But if he won’t run that test, there is some place you can order your own nail called Meridian Valley in Seattle. And they’ll give you an hour with their functional doctor when the test results come back. But by eliminating those 18 foods, I eliminated a big part of my pain in one big bleep. It was enormous, I couldn’t believe it.

Debra Muth 46:17
it’s huge and, and the more foods you have on your test that are reactive, usually the more leaky the gut is kind of a rule of thumb. That’s what usually gives us the first cue that you probably have some leaky gut going on there and how bad it is. But the other thing you did, Cheryl, by doing all of this is you’re preventing your body from developing a secondary autoimmune disease,

Cheryl Meyer 46:43
If you don’t deal with it, then they start to multiply

Debra Muth 46:46
right.

Cheryl Meyer 46:47
Now mine is called undefined, although it’s closest to fibromyalgia. I don’t have all the markers for fibermyalgia. But had I not dealt with it. It could have become hashimotos? Or could it become IBS. Or could it become Parkinson’s. Yeah, it’s important that you own it, and you start to react and do something about it, because you don’t want that progressive disease going on in your body?

Debra Muth 47:11
Absolutely. Absolutely. Cheryl, this is such a great conversation. And we could certainly go on forever here talking about different things and making people knowledgeable about this. But you have a few tools that you’ve created that can help people would you share with us what those tools are and how people can get them or get in touch with you.

Cheryl Meyer 47:31
I have four books on Amazon, but two of them are major. The first one was my first book, which has now won 17 Awards. “It feels good to feel good, learn to eliminate toxins, reduce inflammation and feel great again,” it’s available on Amazon. My second book I wrote because my functional doctor requested it which is okay. I don’t eat the standard American diet. That’s self defense for me, if I eat that stuff, I get sick. So how do I live in community and still have a social life. And so it’s called “Feeling good living in community in everyday life.” If I’m going to go to a restaurant, I call it I bet the chef before I even walk in there, if he’s not buying farm to table then there’s not going to be anything because they too are buying their food in little baggies and arranging on your plate that have all those ingredients and can’t pronounce and don’t want in your body. Yeah, if I’m going to somebody else will tell us for dinner somebody I interviewed with on a podcast and you’re not going to make you cook for you Are you thrilled that we’re going to come to your house for dinner, but don’t feel bad. I’m going to bring my own food and I’ll bring plenty that everyone can enjoy some of it and I’ll bring some for john and i in a separate container. We’re coming because we love you and we want to be with you so don’t feel bad that we’re not going to eat what you make. You own it. You are responsible for what you put in your mouth. I talk about how to travel how I vet everything long before we ever take off. I talk about how we went to Europe and what we did sorry, I just got a an infusion of vitamins. So you’re looking at my bruise here. It there’s all kinds of things that you can do to own it. We shop farmers markets every Saturday morning. If you’re a foodie combined all kinds of nifty things that are farmers markets that are healthy. We just scored some arugula flowers which is a bitter which is really good for your liver and I think my salads would fantastic. I am waiting for zucchini flowers which I then stuffed with all my ricotta and fry ghee and they’re delicious. So if you go to farmers markets go to all the women your area they’ll all have different products and get to know all your farmers they become friends. We have a fish lady at our farmers market. She has the best fish I ever ate in my life. She has been in the business for 45 years. She knows what’s farmed and loaded With crud, and what’s healthy and wild and good for us. So get to know your farmers markets and take what you eat as an adventure. And cook for God’s sakes you have to cook because you have to control what you put in your body. And the only way you’re going to do that is by cooking. And people say I don’t have time for that I can cook as fast as I can get in the car, go down and pick up fast food and bring it home. I always have good food ready to go in my refrigerator. My vegetables get washed and put it I level in my refrigerator. So when I opened my door, what am I going to eat, I’m going to grab all those great beautiful vegetables that are loaded with color and nutrients. And then I’ll make a dip out of almand sour cream and an organic dip mix to dip my carrots on my salary and my radishes and my hiccup in the end. This is good as a potato chip only I’m not getting anything bad in my body. If you think ahead, I do eat meat. I call myself pagan. I eat small amounts of meat because I’m diabetic. And I need the sugar to release slowly from the meat. But I only eat meat that eats his own specific diet so that cows eat their grass. Sheep only eat grass. So he’s easy. Buffalo pretty much will only grass, although I think they are feeding them some GMO feed. You only want chickens, that pasture runs up and eat grass, berries and bugs, because that’s what makes them feel good. And trust me they’re going to be skinnier, but they’re also going to face better. So if you buy food quality matters, and everything you do, and you have a shelf life for every cell in your body. So you need to be feeding it stuff that are strong building supplies so that it can be replacing like your gut lining every six days, the lining in your lungs is every two weeks, we need that for COVID right now, all of your organs, all of your cells, they regenerate. And so you want them to be rebuilding from only the best possible stuff. And if they don’t have good stuff, that’s when chronic disease starts to take over.

Debra Muth 52:11
Absolutely. Absolutely. That is so good. That is so great.I love that information. So Cheryl, um, Amazon is a great place to get a hold of you. You’re also on Facebook, and-

Cheryl Meyer 52:23
I have my own podcast, and I strongly recommend you listen, half of it is me talking about health. I just did three on the liver. What is the liver? What does it do? What do you eat for the liver? And what supplements can you take for the liver? That’s really free now on children. Because I’m very passionate that we’ve got to change something or our kids aren’t going to make it we do. Those are just solo then I interview other people like me who got sick, who owned it and came back to health. Because people were coming up to me going it’s all fine. And well, but you did this but I can’t do yeah, you can you can. So I’ve talked to people with cancer who have now gone into complete remission. I’ve talked to two men in their 40s who had major heart surgery that had babies and their why was huge. So they have reversed their heart health. And somebody said to me, everybody keeps asking me what’s the magic pill? He said, they’re shocked cuz I look at them. And I think it’s you. It’s you know, so if you have any of these things that I’ve interviewed these people for, for God’s sakes, listen to it, because they will inspire you to clean up and live a different life, which is why I wanted to do these podcasts. I’m loving having these conversations.

Debra Muth 53:36
That is awesome. What is the name of your podcast? Cheryl?

Cheryl Meyer 53:38
“It feels good to feel good.” Awesome. The second part is future proof your health. And where can they find that podcast on all the top?

Cheryl Meyer 53:47
It’s on most of them but it’s original on voiceamerica.tv and it’s in 80 countries. So it’s out there.

Debra Muth 53:55
That’s awesome. So if there’s anybody listening, and you’ve missed that, please don’t worry about it. If you’re driving or working out while you’re listening to this, we will have it in the show notes. We will also post it in our social media channels so that you can pick it up there and hop over and listen to Cheryl’s podcast.

Cheryl Meyer 54:11
and I’m doing your detox right now. And I’ve decided I’m going to do them quarterly. Because if you don’t get off these chemicals in the sugar, you don’t stand a chance to eat well, because your taste buds are even muted. And need to get off all of that. And then you’ll be shocked at how good all these fruits and vegetables actually taste.

Debra Muth 54:30
so true. That is so true. Cheryl, this has been a great conversation. I’m so pleased to have you here. definitely have to have you back again. There’s so many topics we can talk about.

Cheryl Meyer 54:41
I love talking about all of this and it’s delightful to meet somebody who is as passionate about it as I am.

Debra Muth 54:47
Thank you.

Debra Muth 54:50
Hey, it has been really great sharing this time with you guys on the let’s talk wellness now podcast. If this episode has helped you or you feel as though this episode would help someone else we’d love for you to leave us a review, share this podcast. And if you don’t want to miss the most exciting episodes we have coming. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Google Play. Until next time, live every day to the fullest