Top 5 Health Hacks

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Hilda Labrada Gore, known as Holistic Hilda, is normally the host and producer of this show. Today, in honor of hitting the two million download mark, we turn the tables and invite her to impart her top health hacks as a guest on the program.

Hilda has traveled extensively, exploring wise traditions. She has conducted over 200 interviews for this podcast. She is a certified integrative nutrition health coach and an ACE-certified fitness professional.

In this episode, Hilda shares her tips for improving energy and overall well-being. She tells her own journey and the story of the birth defect that jeopardized her health from the start. She offers insights on the power of sunlight to improve sleep and hormonal function, gives suggestions for how to transition to a more ancestral diet, and reveals the daily physical and spiritual practices that give her perspective and strength.

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Listen to the episode here:

Holistic Hilda, the host of this podcast, brings her top 5 health hacks for improved energy & well-being.

Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Hilda Labrada Gore.

My name is Marisa Moon and I’m your guest host for this special edition of the Wise Traditions podcast. This is episode 200. Our guest is Hilda Labrada Gore, the host and producer of this show. We are celebrating the milestone of two million downloads on this show and as part of the celebration, we decided to turn the tables and get Holistic Hilda on the Wise Traditions show as a guest.

Hilda is the DC Chapter Leader for The Weston A. Price Foundation. She’s a certified integrative nutrition health coach and a podcast coach. She’s the author of Podcasting Made Simple and she launched her Holistic Hilda YouTube channel. She is a passionate and enthusiastic advocate for ancestral health. She explores ancestral wisdom through experts, experiences and epic adventures. She helps us figure out how we can apply what she’s learned into our lives. In this episode, you’ll get to learn Hilda’s top tips for healthy living.

She discusses the power of sunlight and how that can help rev up our mitochondria. She tells us about the foods that her family started eating when they first switched over to a Wise Traditions diet. She shares the strategies for transitioning to this diet if it’s brand new to you. Hilda also tells us about the story of her birth defects that made her parents think she might not even make it. I was blown away. Before we get into it, there’s one more unique aspect to this episode. We’re including a few testimonials from you. We couldn’t have made it to two million downloads without you following our show and sharing it with others. It’s time to know how Wise Traditions has affected your life.

Check out AncestralSupplements.com.

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MarisaMoon.com

Register for our Wise Traditions conference here.

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Welcome to the show, Hilda. It’s great to have you here.

This is so weird, Marisa. I’m the one that’s supposed to say that.

You can go ahead and say it if you want.

Welcome to the show, Marisa.

Thanks.

I’m so thankful that you offered to interview me for a change. It’s fun to do this special episode.

You deserve to be in the spotlight because you are one of the reasons this show is changing so many lives. I want to say congrats to you for hitting that two million download milestone. That’s huge.

 

I can’t even wrap my head around that. It exceeded my expectations, for sure.

I want to say you are hands down one of my favorite hosts. You do such a good job at representing the follower. You ask the most helpful questions. Your personality and your passion shine through. I bet you people reading are nodding their heads and are like, “I always feel like she speaks for me,” because you do, Hilda so thank you.

That is sweet, Marisa. Thank you so much.

I wonder, what has it been like learning from all these experts in podcasting for so many years now?

It’s been amazing. This is the thing. I studied to be a health coach through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I’m a fitness professional and I work for a company called Body & Soul. I already had this health and wellness background. I was a member of The Weston A. Price Foundation so I had that information but suddenly, to be able to directly speak with these experts and gain more knowledge has been amazing, not just for the audience but for me. I have so many takeaways. At the end of every episode, I do say, “If the reader could do one thing.” I have a long list of things I could be doing. I hope I’ll get a chance to share my top tips, what I’ve walked away with because these are actionable health practices that have changed my life.

I hope you keep those somewhere safe because that can make a great book one day.

I’ve thought about that, trust me.

I’m wondering, how did The Weston A. Price Foundation come into your life, to begin with?

It wasn’t the usual route. In other words, a lot of times people will come to the Foundation because they’re sick or they have some health concern. They google eczema and we pop up. In this case, it was my dearest friend who had chronic fatigue and the doctors had no answers for her. After exhausting every conventional treatment, she decided to start tweaking her diet. She went macrobiotic and she tried vegetarianism. She tried all these different things and she finally hit upon the Wise Traditions diet.

She met Sally Fallon Morell at a health fair and she was like, “This woman is glowing with health. I want what she has.” The cool thing was Sally wasn’t selling a particular product or shake. It was just an approach of looking to the past for good health now. As my friend’s health changed, she started pointing the way for me. I was like, “This makes sense to me. Let’s eat as our ancestors did.” I was off to the races.

It hits home when you start connecting all the dots. You start making sense of it all. You don’t look back.

I was telling a friend this, “I wanted raw milk.” I thought, “I want to put raw milk on the table for my family.” Little did I know, that would become not just raw milk but eggs and pastured meat. Going down the rabbit hole but in an amazing way to provide the best for my family. I wouldn’t recommend that people do a complete overhaul because, for some people, that could be overwhelming. I know for me, I was like, “Where do I start? This is too much.” I started with raw milk and also butter. I got rid of the fake stuff and started putting real butter on the table. My family did not complain. As a matter of fact, they were thrilled because it tastes so good.

I don’t know if you were like me but I gave up butter for so long. By the time I was able to have it again, it was a celebration. You have such an impactful health story that started when you were a young child.

I almost feel like it’s a miracle that I’m alive. Maybe that’s why I want to make the most of the time that I have. What happened was when I was in my mother’s womb, she was exposed to German measles and the doctors told her, “Your baby is going to be born with a serious birth defect.” It was a hole in my heart between the lower two ventricles. The blood was flowing in a direction that it shouldn’t have been flowing.

The doctors monitored me over the years. When I was nine years old, they performed open-heart surgery and they said if they wouldn’t have, I would have died at a young age because the blood wasn’t getting properly oxygenated. It was going in the wrong direction. I’m thankful for modern medicine but I’m also thankful for the ways in which I can strengthen my body naturally. On a side note, Sally herself has told me that if my mother had had more vitamin A in her diet, this birth defect might have been avoided altogether. In other words, my mother’s nutrition certainly wasn’t the best and that’s probably one of the reasons I was born as I was.

If we only knew the things that we know now and could share that with all of our family. Here we are now, spreading the message in a big way and Wise Traditions is changing lives. I’m sure you have so many tips that you’ve taken away from the show and I hope you have a few to tell us about.

Educate Yourself

I have 225 tips but I’m going to share with you, some of the top ones that blew me away. The first one surprised me so much. It was from an early episode with Will Winter who is a holistic veterinarian and used to be a vegetarian. The point about Will Winter is he told me not to take anything at face value. He said, “You’ve got to educate yourself.” This shocked me because we had spent the whole episode talking about pastured meat, why it’s so much better for you and the nutritional composition of it compared to the meat that comes from a concentrated animal feeding operation. I said, “What’s one thing we can do to improve our health?” He’s like, “Educate yourself.” I was like, “What?” That blew me away.

I’ve taken that to heart but not only him but Tom Cowan also said, “Be skeptical. Don’t even believe me. Look into it.” This is the most important tip because people are bombarded with information, Marisa, as you know. We’re surrounded by another fad, trend, smoothie and get slim quick scheme if you will. The best thing we can do is to do our research and not take anybody’s word for it. We also need to look for the money trail. In other words, “Are they telling me this because they genuinely want my help to be good? Are they telling me this because they have a special product that’s going to answer all my problems?”

We need to pay attention. This is one reason I love the Weston Price Foundation. They’re not beholden to anybody. They don’t get money so people are like, “They must get money from the media industry.” They don’t. They get donations and gifts from members. They sail through because they are bringing the best information to people. My first tip is educate yourself.

We are fueling ourselves for a purpose, and that is to move.

When you’re trying to educate yourself, you don’t know where to turn. Do you have any tips for the readers, maybe some basic ways that they should always be digging for the truth?

Pay Attention To How Your Body Responds To Foods

We can also trust our own intuition more than we realize. We discount how foods make us feel and the energy we get from them because we don’t want to believe it. For example, I have a friend who said to me, “Hilda, I listened to one of your podcasts. Now I know, I shouldn’t have kale unless it’s cooked or prepared with some lime juice. In other words, there are anti-nutrients in some of these vegetables that need to be set aside so that we can get the most out of them.” Combining of course with oils, fats and all this.

She was telling me, “I used to feel so healthy eating kale,” but at the same time, she had digestive issues with it. She didn’t recognize it because she didn’t want to believe that and everyone says kale is a superfood. Pay attention to how your body responds to food. That may help you as well. Look for the most natural choices. Are there paleo-approved granola bars? Are there heart-healthy choices that have only five ingredients? Yes but why not just get those ingredients yourself and experiment with making your own granola? These are some of the recommendations I would give people.

It’s foundational. Staying curious, asking questions and connecting with your food choices. That’s wonderful.

Embrace Real Food, Eliminate Processed Food

This one is one of the first ones from Dr. Price. He said that we shouldn’t have refined or denatured food. It goes along with what I was telling you. Let’s avoid the over-processing and stick with more simple, whole, real foods. For those who don’t know, Dr. Price is an amazing dentist and researcher who traveled around the world in the 1930s. He was trying to find the healthiest people. As a dentist, of course, he was looking at their teeth. He was interested in seeing the incidence of cavities in indigenous people, crowding of teeth and all that. What he found was the people who were the healthiest had the most amazing teeth. He said, “The teeth tell the tale.”

He could also see that they were hale, hearty and fertile. He started comparing these indigenous people who were untouched by modern society and food choices with those who had changed their diet and incorporated some more modern refined flour, sugar and oils. He could see the difference. He documented a lot of this in his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. This tip is to embrace real food and eliminate processed food.

Even on the packages that say, “This has natural flavorings and colorings,” some of those are just concocted in a factory and our body doesn’t know what to do with it. Some have even postulated that it’s those chemicals, flavorings and preservatives that are poking holes in our gut and leading to leaky gut, gut dysbiosis and all sorts of problems. By embracing real food and eliminating processed food, we will go far in restoring our health.

That’s a great tip. By doing that, didn’t you say people can already feel and notice big changes in their health and their family’s health?

Absolutely. We have a lot of young moms who follow us on this podcast and follow the foundation. There are also some young moms I’ve had on the show. I think of Robin Shirley, for example. She has run the Take Back Your Health conference on the Western East Coast. She said, “Food is a strong foundation.” I know that she turned her own health around using real food and now she has been blessed with a little baby, Olivia. It’s amazing to see the changes that can come from this one switch.

I believe it. Maybe some people reading are like, “I’d like to do that but I’m too busy. I don’t have time.” Have you learned any tips regarding adding whole foods to your diet when you don’t have time?

Cook Less Often But Cook Enough Quantity

I can relate. It doesn’t get any easier. My kids are older now and I still feel super busy. It is worth the investment of time just like you would go to the hospital to visit your grandmother if she wasn’t feeling well. We can make the time. We can find the time to prepare nourishing foods for our family. This is what I do. I cook once but use that food for several meals.

I made a sirloin tip roast that I got from the farmer. I didn’t know how to cook that cut of meat but I ordered it one day in a moment of inspiration. I covered it with a bunch of herbs, stuck it in the oven and then a few hours later, there it was but we were heading out to go be with some family. Long story short, I cut up the meat the next day and we heated up some of the slices with some eggs and kimchi or something for dinner.

My plan that night is to cut some of the rest of it into little cubes, put it on some skewers with some tomatoes and onion and have them as kebabs. This is one big piece of meat. Another night, I’m probably going to have fried rice and use broth for the rice. Don’t overdo it in the kitchen. I get it that everybody’s busy but my suggestion is to cook less often but cook enough quantity so it lasts for several nights. That will help you save time and then you’ll know what you’re having for the next meal.

The things that you mentioned there like putting a couple of vegetables on the skewer and adding it with rice aren’t some complex recipes that you need all these ingredients for. You can use that leftover steak to throw something together. You’re not overcomplicating things.

My friend, Hilary Boynton, who I’ve also had on the show has said all the time, “Simplicity is gourmet.” I agree. Tell me if this isn’t right, Marisa. When you have a good cut of meat or some amazing farm-fresh eggs, you don’t need to do a lot to make them amazingly tasty.

I couldn’t agree more. I always tell people, “If you have fresh garlic, not that stuff that’s minced in a jar with liquid. That doesn’t count. If you have fresh garlic, butter, good extra virgin olive oil and sea salt, you could make so many things taste amazing. Add in a little vinegar or lemon.” Am I talking about a delicious dish already, Hilda?

My mouth is watering, absolutely.

It doesn’t have to be hard. Work with a few flavorful things like garlic, sea salt and butter and you can turn some stuff out.

It’s true.

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Coming up, Hilda shed some light on why light is so important to our bodies and how to best utilize sun exposure for good health.

Visit AncestralSupplements.com to see what they can do for you. Ancestral Supplements is putting back in what the modern world has left out.

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Why don’t you dive into a couple more tips before we wrap up?

 

Get Exposed To The Sun

Now I know how my guests feel because I have so much that I want to share but I will try to summarize. One of my favorite tips has come within the last few years. This one surprised me, Marisa. It has to do with the sun. All these years I’ve been like, “Eat the Wise Traditions diet.” I’m still all about that but what I did not know is that the mitochondria in our cells, these little engines that keep our body functioning properly, 2/3 of their energy comes from the sun and 1/3 comes from food. In other words, it is as critical, if not more so for us to get exposed to the sun to give that energy to the mitochondria as it is for us to eat well. This is mind-blowing.

What I’ve started doing at least is taking my meals outside as much as possible, breakfast, lunch and dinner. We have a little back patio. It’s not fancy. I live in the city but we do what we can and we do that to promote good digestion, synthesize the vitamin D from the sun and energize that mitochondria. I can’t get over how good I feel letting my body get its energy from the sun.

I’ve also incorporated a tip I got from my friend, Thaddeus Owen who is the primal hacker, who I had on the show. It was called Biohacking Our Health. He talked about getting the early morning sunrise sun. If we get out there within the first 30 to 45 minutes of that morning sunrise, we get our circadian rhythm sets and we get light from the sun that doesn’t include the UVA or UVB spectrum. What that means is we’re getting a protective exposure to the sun that helps us bear the sun later in the day because I’m also a fan of no sunscreen.

I could go on and on about this but I want to suffice it to say that I, who have always felt healthy all along to be honest with you, feel better than ever because of this happy habit I have of getting out in that morning sun and getting out in the sun as much as possible. It is amazing. It is life-transforming. I used to be a night owl. I used to stay up late working on my computer, getting podcasts out probably, blogging and stuff like that. Now I go to bed earlier and my sleep is more efficient. It is deeper and more profound. I feel like I’m leaner and I’m working out the same amount. It is mind-blowing.

My next tip is get that sunrise and a bit of screen rise any day of the week. If you’re one of those people who grabs your phone and starts scrolling through social media or checking your emails, you’ve got to get out in that sun and you will feel a difference. Just commit to it. This is what Thaddeus has told me and I started doing it and I was blown away. “Commit to it for about three weeks and tell me if it didn’t make a difference.”

Educate yourself, embrace real food and eliminate those processed foods and get outside for at least three weeks and tell us if you didn’t notice a difference. You’ve got any more top tips you want to share?

I’ll share one more because I can’t help myself. It is to move. I’ll never forget when I interviewed Philip Weeks. He was one of the early episodes. He’s from England so I was so charmed by his accent. He had written some book about health and he said, “Hilda, all indigenous cultures had movement but it wasn’t exercise, per se.” It’s not like they were grabbing logs and doing bicep curls or triceps presses or Bench Presses. They were moving, of course, as part of their daily rhythm and chores that they had to do but they were also dancing.

That resonated with me because I’m Latina and I love to dance. I was like, “Yes, this makes sense.” In the context of our modern world, do we need to take time to exercise and be specific and intentional about it? Absolutely. I do lead exercise classes with Body & Soul. I do push-ups every day and pull-ups because I want to stay strong. Physical labor isn’t a part of my day-to-day life, unfortunately. It might be for some of these readers. I love you, all my friends who are reading who live off the grid or have your chores on the farm. That’s fantastic but I currently don’t live that way so I do need to be intentional.

The main thing is to move because our bodies were meant to. In other words, we don’t just fuel ourselves with good food because it tastes good and we want everything to work right. Both of those things will be true but we’re fueling ourselves for a purpose and it is to move. It is to be able to walk with our dog or be with our grandchildren or lift our children and put them on our shoulders when we’re going to a park. We are supposed to be fit. Not just to be buff and to show off but fit functionally. I want to encourage people to move.

Another one of my favorite guests was Darryl Edwards who’s the guy who came up with Primal Play. He says, “You got to move like an animal.” I’ve bought his deck of cards and his book, Animal Moves. It’s fascinating. It makes sense to me, too, that we should move in ways that are natural to our bodies. There’s a lot to explore and unpack. I want to tell people, whatever you do, don’t just sit around. Get out of that office, get moving and have fun. Part of life is playing, enjoying and moving.

You inspire me. I find it so energizing to hear what you’re doing for fun and what you’re doing to move. If you live in the United States, we have great weather and we should take advantage of that and spend time with all generations playing outdoors. Hilda, thank you for that. It’s time for the official wrap-up question everybody’s probably wondering. If the reader could do one thing to improve their health, Hilda, what would you recommend that they do?

Marisa, I’m about to cry because my own answer is surprising me. I have over 190 things to give you and I was thinking about saying something related to getting outside, which is critical but I am going to go a little spiritual here because we are comprised of mind, body and spirit. I recommend people to explore that facet of their lives. There is more to us than meets the eye. The longer I live, the more I’m convinced of the importance of a spiritual practice.

I personally read my Bible every day, I pray and I’m connected with a community that encourages me and my faith. This is important because you can do everything to make your body strong but if your spirit is flagging, you are going to have an unhappy life. You’re going to be missing most of the joy that’s out there. I definitely recommend that people look for a way to incorporate a spiritual practice in their life and that will help them live life to the fullest.

You gave me chills, Hilda. Thank you for taking us there. It’s so valuable to hear how important that is in your life because sometimes we forget in the modern world about those foundational principles that enrich us and keep us healthy so thank you.

It’s my pleasure. Can I say one more word of encouragement to the audience? Don’t get overwhelmed because I feel like there are so many things flying at us all the time. Even if we applied every single thing that a person said on this show, it would be so much at once. Just pick one thing. That’s why I started the one thing. Even in this episode, pick 1 of the 5 or 6 things I mentioned and try to apply that and then, later on, do another. I spent a whole year incorporating butter into our family’s diet and then the next year, it was like, “Let’s get less processed foods, less chips and things.” I took my time and it was a lasting change. I want to offer that word of encouragement as well.

That’s great advice. If anyone wants to keep learning more about Hilda, where should they find you?

They can find me on this show, which is so much fun. They can follow me @HolisticHilda on Instagram. Stay tuned because I have something special cooking up, the amazing trip to Australia I’ll be taking. I am looking for ways to continue to bring valuable ancestral health information to all people everywhere so stick close.

You can do everything to make your body strong, but if your spirit is flagging, you are going to have an unhappy life.

I’ll be following for sure. Hilda, it was my pleasure to interview you and flip the tables so we can learn more about you. I can’t wait to talk again.

Marisa, you’re the sweetest. Thanks.

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Our guest was Holistic Hilda, Hilda Labrada Gore. For more from Hilda, visit her website at HolisticHilda.com and you can find me, Marisa Moon, on Instagram @Marisa_Moon_ or you can listen to my podcast called The Foundation of Wellness. Stay tuned for a couple of more of those testimonials. Thanks again for reading, everyone. Thanks for having me be a guest host. It was a privilege and I can’t wait to talk to you again. Bye.

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“I’m Rose Manalo from the Philippines. This feedback is about the Wise Traditions podcast for which I have been a subscriber for almost two years. I’m a survivor of severe depression and I’m now helping people with depression. Hence, the episodes I love the most are those that offer more information about depression such as those by Dr. Kelly Brogan and Dr. Natasha McBride.

I’ve never missed out on any of the episodes guested by Ms. Sally Fallon Morell. She’s my favorite. Among the topics she discussed on the show, I love the most the one titled How to have the healthiest babies. I have shared that content with my nieces who were pregnant. The podcast is a big help in my efforts to disseminate health information, most especially about mental health. It’s engaging and the host, Ms. Hilda, is one of the best there is in the podcasting world. She’s articulate and she has perfect timing. What I like the most about her style of hosting is how she seems to absorb the content and reacts to the speaker. I feel like I’m with her and she’s reacting as myself and asking my own questions. Wise Traditions podcast, keep it up. You’re helping so many of us out here. Thank you.”

“I’ve got three little kids so I have little time to sit down and read. However, I have lots of time doing chores or driving the kids here and there. The Wise Traditions podcast has become my number one source of information on real food and healthy living. I’m so grateful for the work that Hilda is doing and that the Weston A. Price Foundation is doing to bring this information to moms like me and to present it in ways that we can access it and learn from it.”

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